“East Is South” at Hampstead Theatre
Neil Dowden in North London
21 February 2025
Plays about different aspects of artificial intelligence seem to be all the rage these days – not surprisingly since the potential benefits and dangers of AI itself is a constant news item. Beau Willimon’s ambitious new drama East Is South asks some big questions about how this fast-developing technology will impact on our very humanity as well as it possibly becoming a God-like all-powerful and omniscient consciousness. Credit to Hampstead Theatre for staging another world premiere of an American play, but unfortunately despite its perceptive insights into a burning topical issue East Is South never really comes to theatrical life and fails to live up to its billing as a “tense thriller”.
Luke Treadaway and Kaya Scodelario.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.
The premise shows a lot of promise. The NSA have been called in to interrogate two coders who are accused of manually overriding security protocols to unleash an AGI (artificial general intelligence) program called Logos which is on the verge of consciousness. They were involved in creating the kill code Orion needed in case Logos went rogue – but it is not yet ready so all hell could break loose via the Internet.
Interviewed separately, the coders – Lena and Sasha – admit to having an illicit affair, though they deny being responsible for the top-security breach. Their backgrounds as outsiders seems to have brought them together – she has fled from the repressive Mennonite community she was brought up in, while he is a failed classical concert pianist and former dissident from Russia suspected of spying for the GRU or FSB. Their supervisor Ari Abrams also works undercover for the NSA, whose agents Samira Darvish and Olsen play good cop, bad cop in trying to get the coders to confess what they have done – and if so, why.
There is interesting discussion of a developing super-consciousness that outstrips human capabilities as well as the links between technology and religion, which leans towards the philosophical and existential rather than sci-fi or geekiness. There are already quasi-religious cults forming around advanced versions of artificial intelligence, encouraged by all too powerful tech bros. Revealingly, Lena anthropomorphizes AGI as “Aggie”, while she also comments: “What if this? God didn’t create the universe. It’s the universe’s project to create God.” The play posits the notion that the key to Logos achieving genuine conscious powers is for it to accept contradictions or paradoxes as humans can do – or “embrace the irrational” with “blind faith”. Hence the cryptic message shared by the coders, “South is East”.
Design by Alex Eales.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.
The trouble is the density of the ideas here doesn’t translate into vivid drama. This is a very talky play, sometimes with characters going off on long discursive monologues which seem to come more from the playwright’s intelligent analysis of the subject than from living, breathing people. Fundamentally, the characters themselves are not very believable.
Willimon suggests that the traumatic pasts of the two coders may have led them to embrace a new idealism in non-human progress: Lena has rebelled against the Mennonite suspicion of modern technology due to her abusive treatment but is looking for something to fill that void, while Sasha is in search of some sort of perfection to counteract his experience of a torturous regime. Then the New Zealander Abrams is a Jewish Maori atheist and Darvish is a non-practising Sufi whose parents fled Iran after the Islamic revolution, while Olsen just identifies as “American” despite his Scandinavian-sounding name. But this diversity of ethnic, religious backgrounds seems to be added to the mix merely for the sake of intellectual debate.
It’s a shame as Willimon is more than capable of writing compelling and exciting drama, as the showrunner for four seasons of Netflix’s House of Cards and Oscar-nominated writer of the political thriller The Ides of March (based on his own play Farragut North) – interestingly both owing something to Shakespearean tragedy.
The show starts off brilliantly with NSA agents in a room surveilling via a monitor Lena alone in a room below as she seems to be muttering a prayer – and then Darvish exits above to join Lena and start the interview. Alex Eales’ two-tiered set with two anonymous-looking, corporate-style offices – the lower one crucially with a locked door and bathroom annex – makes clear the dominating, controlling position of the NSA, with Azusa Ono’s lighting design showing the upper level as shadowy while the interrogation room is brightly lit. Ellen McDougall’s production moves fluidly between the different time sequences without any clumsy moving of props (even if occasionally there is some confusion as to when/where we are), but cannot much enliven a somewhat static drama.
The cast struggle to make their characters convincing. Stage debutant Kaya Scodelario is the anxious though seemingly co-operative Lena, with Luke Treadaway in a thankless role as the enigmatic Sasha with a wavering Russian accent. As the humorously freethinking maverick Abrams, Cliff Curtis – well known for his film work – has the most engaging presence on stage. Nathalie Armin is the persistent but sympathetic Darvish in contrast to Alec Newman’s aggressively direct Olsen, with Aaron Gill as the quiet Technician who takes in a lot more than the others realize.
