The Guardian explores this question.
From the piece...
Playwrights who choose to stray into sci-fi territory often do so almost apologetically – creating plausible near-futures, recognisable worlds that differ from ours only in minor details. Steve Waters's double bill of plays about climate change, The Contingency Plan, did this particularly effectively, and Australian playwright Ben Ellis went down a similar path with GM crops in his Poet No 7. The term Atwood prefers is speculative fiction, and that feels apt in this instance.
Alan Ayckbourn ventures deeper into these waters: his play Comic Potential uses androids to explore what it means to be human. A similar device is used in Tamsin Oglesby's play Really Old, Like Forty Five, which recently opened at the National. While opinions about Oglesby's play have been divided – ranging from four stars in the Guardian to one dreg in the West End Whingers' new wine-based rating system, most agreed on the calibre of Michela Meazza's performance as Mimi, the robot nurse with the eerie crimson grin who purrs like a cat when she's stroked.
A delicate balance is required to combat the fact that what might be acceptable on screen or paper can look absurd on stage.
No comments:
Post a Comment