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# Fringe THEATRE REVIEW: Quintessence @Sweet Works 2
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/fringe-theatre-review-quintessence-sweet-works-2/
- Published: 2019-05-09T11:57:35.000Z
- Updated: 2019-05-09T11:57:35.000Z
- Description: Ever since Isaac Asimov wrote his series of Sci Fi books about the rise of the robots, we have feared what Artificial Intelligence (AI) might lead to. In her one-woman show Quintessence, Emily Carding cleverly and thoughtfully combines a view of a post-apocalyptic world with the undying power of Sha
- Author: Besi

## Ever since Isaac Asimov wrote his series of Sci Fi books about the rise of the robots, we have feared what Artificial Intelligence (AI) might lead to.

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/web-600-1-9.jpg)

**IN her one-woman** show *Quintessence*, **Emily Carding** cleverly and thoughtfully combines a view of a post-apocalyptic world with the undying power of Shakespeare’s plays.

I know it sounds a bit bizarre but my oh my how well it works. Global warming leading to famine and global war finally wipes out the human race. As the show opens, the avatar **Ariel**, a first generation android addresses us on the centenary of the birth of the **AI** generation that now inhabits the earth.

With black and white contact lenses, Emily is every inch the robot, humourless, dry, scary and infallible.

Brilliantly the show interlaces her eerie flat-voiced robotic story-telling with highly impassioned relevant passages from the Bard’s greatest plays.

There is a frightening logic about **AI** she is telling us. The robots literally base their whole society on Shakespeare’s view of the world. Their main raison d’etre is to re-create humanity because mankind must thrive.

Their early attempts are actually successful, but they believe the signs of adolescence – moodiness, anger etc are signs of imperfection and the failure of their experiment. Because **AI** rules don’t allow them to painlessly destroy the humans they have made, they cast them outside their protected bio-domes presumably to die in the wilderness, much as Prospero treated the deformed creature Caliban in *The Tempest*.

In their attempt to recreate humans, the robots decide they must remove those elements of the human character that led to its doom – hate, anger, the need for power. You can see the scary logic of this machine world but of course we know it will all end in tears.

It is Shakespeare’s *“so potent art”* that leads them in all things even when the great writer seems to contradict himself. Ariel is puzzled why his greatest tribute to love – *Romeo and Juliet* – only leads to hate and death. The end is predictably inevitable.

Emily Carding, directed by **Dominique Gerrard** gives a stunning performance as our monotone robotic guardian angel. And in the Shakespearean passages she is strong, energetic and full of emotion.

To be or not to be is a binary question which the robots can identify with – zero or 1, thrive or not thrive. But in the end the seeds of destruction are hidden in the seeds of creation.

**Quintessence** plays at Sweet Werks 2 in Middle Street, Brighton as part of Brighton Fringe till May 12.

**To book tickets online, click [here:](https://www.brightonfringe.org/whats-on/quintessence-135797/?ref=scenemag.co.uk)**

**Review by Brian Butler**