Typical knowledge says the theater is sluggish to react to present occasions, however dramatists like Ayad Akhtar (“McNeal”) have clamored these days to inform tales about synthetic intelligence, generally utilizing it to assist with the writing.
Matthew Gasda’s new play “Doomers” is an addition to that pack. Inspired by the 2023 ouster of Sam Altman, the chief government of OpenAI, it was written with the assistance of ChatGPT and Claude. The 2 chatbots share a dramaturgy credit score in this system.
Alas, the hype round that expertise doesn’t correlate right here with narrative cogency. Regardless of having a loathsome fictional ex-C.E.O. at its middle, and quite a few characters who joust over the peril and promise of A.I., “Doomers” possesses a peculiarly self-indulgent high quality, as if it takes with no consideration that its viewers is invested from the get-go.
It is a crisis-driven story set on a single evening in San Francisco, simply after a tech firm, MindMesh, has dismissed its chief, Seth (Sam Hyrkin). Holed up at dwelling, he’s plotting to get his job again, whereas the corporate’s panicked board tries to determine the best way to transfer ahead with out him.
A sociopath who lacks the requisite allure, Seth tells his confidants: “I cannot compromise; I cannot admit fault. I used to be fired for creating miracles.”
That isn’t how the board would put it, however we don’t meet them till Act II. The primary act, by far the stronger half of this meandering play, is all about Seth’s predicament.
Gasda, who additionally directs this manufacturing, has double solid it, with 10 actors showing in every efficiency. The solid I noticed at artXnyc in Manhattan was properly polished. (A lot of the play’s upcoming New York exhibits are on the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research in Greenpoint.)
However the characters erupt in flagrantly unlikely monologues, as when Alina (Zsuzsa Magyar), the corporate’s scrupulous chief security officer, tells her colleagues about disturbing recurring desires, considered one of them vividly sexual.
Extra troublesome is that their moral arguments about A.I. really feel rehashed when you’ve adopted the difficulty in any respect, and never credible as issues these folks can be saying to 1 one other below these circumstances. There’s the sense, too, that the play, whose New York run will overlap with a separate manufacturing in San Francisco in March, is attempting each to reflect a tradition and ingratiate itself with it.
An Act I line, by which Seth makes use of a slur for the intellectually disabled to explain some board members, obtained a nasty snicker on the efficiency I noticed. Sure, that phrase is having a resurgence and is truthful recreation for a playwright to make use of, however does another person actually need to utter it in Act II? Equally, in all probability one polycule joke would have sufficed.
There are mentions all through of Elon, no final title given, however there doesn’t have to be. (Seth, irritated with Alina, snipes: “You shoulda simply had Elon’s child when he needed to.”)
“Doomers” is marketed as “‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ for the A.I. age,” however I believe that the HBO drama “Succession” bears some accountability for the play’s misperception that board strategizing and company jargon make for riveting theater.
The second act is all about MindMesh’s board, however strains like “We’re right here to supervise and cut back threat and potential malfeasance” are lethal with out characters and conditions to curiosity us within the stakes. For a play that takes place at such a fraught second, it has a putting lack of rigidity.
Perhaps it’s right down to the dramaturgs, ChatGPT and Claude?
After I requested the publicist about that program credit score, he instructed me it was “a tongue-in-cheek joke” — that Gasda had “performed round with Claude and ChatGPT asking the A.I. questions, so he would perceive the expertise he was writing about.”
Human error, then. Ah nicely.
Doomers
By means of April 19 on the Brooklyn Middle for Theater Analysis, Brooklyn, and artXnyc, Manhattan; doomers.fyi. Operating time: 2 hours.
