Live forever or switch off?
It is 1803, and murderers are hung, spirited away and dissected by surgeons seeking to know more about the human body. Next up, Luigi Galvani sends electricity through a corpse, and it twitches. Jump to 2074 when medical science has moved on and minds of the rich and recently deceased can be downloaded into young, fit humanoids to start their lives over, writes Dan Martin.
That’s the theory. The reality is that the team at the clinic are still in the experimental stage whereby they upload brains into a robot to see how it works; will it have a memory, feel pain…?
One by one, the robot-brain collaborations malfunction and get switched off and replaced by another until Bridget(Alison Halstead) comes to life with the power to remember everything. So much so that she realises that she is actually dead and wants to know why she is here and what the doctors’ plans are for her. The more she remembers being a young woman with a husband and a future, the more she resents being something that doesn’t have a heartbeat, an appetite, or a need to breathe. She is a thing that is being tested and observed, and Bridget wants out of this immortal life.
Act 2 and Bridget’s elderly husband Harry(Tim McMullan) has been located with his elderly second wife Devina(Helen Schlesinger), 48 years after the accident that took Bridget’s life. In their 80s, the couple look around sixty because of the healthy diet they follow and the chip embedded in their neck telling them what to eat and when. Harry feels he must take Bridget into his home.
This is when the morals and ethics of such a situation are brought to the fore. Davina feels jealous of this young woman who was once the love of her husband’s life, if not now in body, then in spirit. Harry, on the other hand, feels a cerebral rekindling of the love they once shared.
For him, it has been almost 50 years since they were last together. For Bridget, who has only recently been uploaded to her new body, it has been just ten days, so everything is fresh in her mind, but the man before her is far from fresh. Plus, he barely recalls their time together.
Oh, the quandaries laid before us by Lauren Moody and James Yeatman’s More Life were a talking point all the way home. Right now, I feel like I want to live forever, but would I really want to if it was possible? Bridget gets to choose her future. Live forever or switch herself off… Seeing this great six-hander ensemble piece is the only way to find out.
Royal Court, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS until March 8th.
Booking and full details: https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/more-life/
