Girl in the Machine
Isolde Fenton in Girl in the Machine. Image, Marcin Lewandowski
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Sauntering along Cork’s MacCurtain Street, a notice asks: would you switch off AI if you had the power? A publicity ploy to highlight a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Its spectre of life-threatening, self-conscious technology making for science-fiction fantasy in 1968. A theme echoed in Stef Smith’s 2017 dystopian fantasy Girl in the Machine. Fantasies that now resemble prophecies, with AI posing clear and present dangers like those in Smith’s futuristic tale. Hospital nurse Owen presenting his corporate lawyer wife, Polly, with a VR headset, unaware of its evolving intent. A device which allows her escape the pressures of reality, and their relationship, into an alternate state of ease and bliss. Director Éadaoin Fox making bold choices in a taut, strained production as Polly becomes a mindless Renfield, enslaved to a digital Dracula. Girl in the Machine the third and final production in Cork Arts Theatre’s Re:Directing Programme 2026. A thrilling, essential enterprise showcasing contemporary plays and platforming Cork’s theatre directors.
Stefan Brennan-Healy and Isolde Fenton in Girl in the Machine. Image, Marcin Lewandowski
Like The Peripheral or Ready Player One, Girl in the Machine imagines the future being shaped, and escaped, through the lens of a VR headset. Aedín Cosgrove’s clinically designed apartment a cell of minimal functionality, with barely a trace of human personality. Its walls and details, like Cosgrove’s lighting, absolved of warmth, both human and natural. Here, Isolde Fenton’s overworked Polly works from home in front of her screens. Fox’s clever conceit sees the audience enter with Polly oblivious to everyone. Her sole purpose to sit and view, her body twisting and stretching to defy its limiting inconvenience. Until the arrival of Stefan Brennan-Healy as husband Owen, like a Greek bearing gifts. The gift in question a Black Box device that supposedly calms an overactive mind. Pressured, Polly reluctantly agrees to try the headset, becoming immediately hypnotised and craving more. Amber Deasy as the voice of Black Box showing Alexa-like dispassion. A contrast to Fox’s trippy projections consuming the stage like a psychedelic trance rave during every trip. In which one-toned voice-overs are frequently drowned beneath a beat-driven score. And so begins Polly’s digital dopamine addiction. Which mushrooms into a mounting epidemic of global suicides driven by Black Box’s sinister forces. Girl in the Machine asking important questions about what kind of AI Faustian pact are we making despite fiction’s many apocalyptic warnings?
Stefan Brennan-Healy and Isolde Fenton in Girl in the Machine. Image, Marcin Lewandowski
If Girl in the Machine makes pertinent points, ultimately it fails to make its human case. Due primarily to Brennan-Healy’s Owen and Fenton’s Polly having zero chemistry. The charmless, insufferable Owen, sporting the mother of all chips on his microchipped shoulder, a bully whose loud belligerence defines his overpowering bedside manner. Each entrance becoming a punishment; each exit a relief. His declarations of love, sounding like threats, leave sex scenes looking forced. Brennan-Healy’s self-centred Owen, starting at indignation and rising to histrionic, displaying little tenderness or genuine human affection. Explaining why Polly got lost in her work. Technology never ruined this relationship; it was clearly doomed. The brave Fenton having a mountain to climb, trying to convince us of what our eyes don’t believe. That there is love here, a real relationship, true human connection. Fenton doing sterling work to make us care, highlighting an unworkable tension between characters which Fox should have addressed and resolved.
Isolde Fenton and Stefan Brennan-Healy in Girl in the Machine. Image, Marcin Lewandowski
If Girl in the Machine is unsettled on the surface, Fox teases out Smith’s subtextual concerns. The use of retro technology suggesting that not all technology poses concerns. The poignant ending, with its two pressing “not enoughs”, revealing that technology was never really the problem. More a botched attempt at a solution, or an effort to avoid facing who and what we truly are. Our shared uncertainties numbed by technological heroin. The initial high seeming to make our lives better, leading to an easy convenience that turns self-destructive. Yet if unregulated technology is a risky choice, letting go is not quite so clear-cut. It’s notoriously hard to break an addiction. Also, if Owen is what a humanised future looks like, you might choose the headset. Yet Cork Arts Theatre, imbued with the warmth of strangers and friends, interrogating plays like Girl in the Machine through its brilliant directorial programme, serves as hope for a genuine human tomorrow. As well as a reminder of all we yet may lose.
So, would you switch off AI? Do we own it, disown it, or risk being disowned by it? The choice is yours. For now. Girl in a Machine an ambitious, thought provoking experience.
Girl in the Machine by Stef Smith, presented by Cork Arts Theatre, runs at Cork Arts Theatre until November 21st.
For more information, visit Cork Arts Theatre
