More Life at Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs
Simon Jenner in West London
14 February 2025
1803. A man brought from the gallows will be electrocuted back to life. Though he and quotes from Frankenstein (inspired by this historical moment) flicker once or twice, it’s a portentous prologue: galvanized with guignol. Set mostly in 2074 this is otherwise Bridget’s story. Bridget who died in 2026 and is now back. Electronically. Perhaps. Lauren Mooney and James Yeatman’s More Life with Mooney’s text and dramaturgy is directed by Yeatman at the Royal Court Upstairs till 8 March.
Photo credit: Helen Murray.
The Royal Court’s artistic director David Byrne produced memorable work with this show’s collaborators Kandinsky when he ran New Diorama. And the Court seems an ideal fit here: one of several plays deriving its DNA from Caryl Churchill’s A Number. But whilst cloning’s been an imaginative feature for 25 years, recent AI and tech-bro bids for immortality, uploading brains to new bodies, inspires different questions. More Life explores such corporate greed in a slightly unexplored world where people or loved ones have consented for their brains to be scanned, digitalized, and (as it transpires) exploited for gain. Outside the science compound’s bubble might lurk apocalyptic deserts: few able to afford even the life they have. All six cast members alternate between roles and chorus.
After decades of preparation, Victor (a charmingly ruthless Marc Elliott) encounters challenges when reanimation’s attempted. He literally switches off dozens of former people who fail to function properly. Either there’s a physical disconnect, or incapacity to answer questions. Then Victor and younger sympathetic subordinate Mike (Lewis Mackinnon) discover Bridget (Alison Halstead): she has perfect recall, physical embodiment, and sharp questions. If Bridget succeeds – the whole concept’s loaded – she’ll be first of hundreds of thousands. Or are these lives “just an echo … The ripple of a stone dropped into water”?
Victor chooses Bridget because she’s “clever”; he soon discovers just how much. Halstead’s achingly quiet and calm, till she isn’t, in a performance slanted not just towards questions, but desire for human connection. Bridget isn’t so much nostalgic for her former self, as wanting to negotiate what she now means. And who remembers her. Her former husband does. Which only sets more questions.
Though billed as “sci-fi gothic horror”, there’s just a single such moment (bar prologue) that seems ready to redirect the whole story: but apart from some queasy flinches from Mike, it doesn’t quite happen. Bridget’s humanity has taken over and ultimately Mooney and Yeatman are far more captured by questions of how to feel human when you’re a collection of memories and functioning intelligence.
Photo credit: Helen Murray.
Bridget’s husband Harry (a querulous Tim McMullan) has questions to answer from both wives, as Davina (Helen Schlesinger) discusses whether something happened on her 50th or 60th birthday, now she’s 80. A privileged bubble of Bridget’s contemporaries exists amongst those younger like Mike. Danusia Samal apparates as Ghost or Past Bridget, sometimes taking over from Halstead as Harry projects his partly forgotten past onto her, desperate to retrieve it. Samal brings a fresh, naturalistic warmth to who Bridget was.
Four characters gear to 2074 differently. Whilst Mackinnon embodies a younger world outside this loop of eternity, Elliott’s Victor mixes ruthlessness with flashes of empathy. Harry and Davina though straddle past and present. Incredibly well preserved, Davina in Schlesinger’s wary warmth emerges as someone well aware of her vanishing options – the couple’s diet obsession furnishing laughs. Like Mike, Davina responds to whatever’s human in Bridget. Harry though is conflicted, as certain traits emerge in a superb wibble of a performance from McMullan. Harry was charmed first by Bridget’s “directness’ and that’s not gone. Bridget in Halstead’s hands emerges almost as an emissary from whatever essence humanity is. She’s mesmerizing.
Shankho Chaudhuri’s tangerine multi-shelved backdrop curves from some pristine archaeology of the future we used to think might happen. It’s where Ryan Joseph Stafford’s lighting plays bewitchingly with space and dark. Most haunting, composer Zac Gvirtzman (and co-sound designer along with Dan Balfour) produces a score soft-pulsing like an a cappella riff on Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman”. Directed by Osnat Schmool, the vocals hum with those born and unborn again.
There’s a drop in the plot’s direction after the interval, where Bridget’s accommodation to her new family as such gets explored. Currently at over two hours 20 minutes, it could tighten. Already the very last page (and elements elsewhere) are edited out with intriguing shifts. Dark turns are threatened; though thwarting obvious conclusions is an index of how exceptional and densely satisfying More Life is. One of few such plays to deliver its promises, it ducks a few threats. Dystopias, it feels, are too obvious. And the choric end, probing so many future hauntologies, leaves us flinching with what an eternal present might be like.
