Humanistic sci-fi in ‘Watson’
In the great, heaving throb of human longing for connection, there’s a space in between what other humans can do for us and what our mechanical and digital inventions — from the telephone all the way to artificial intelligence — can fulfill. In dramatizing this lacuna, many artists seek little more than to condemn us for our privilege and ingratitude — “How dare you want even more, when you already have it so easy!” — or to stir vague anxieties about the ever-growing power of machines.
Not the playwright Madeleine George.
These dynamics factor in to her magnificent “The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence,” seen Thursday, Aug. 17 at Shotgun Players’ Ashby Stage. But as it explores the relationships among inventors past and present, their inventions and their loved ones, the show is much more original, humanistic and wide-ranging than mere fearmongering or wrist slapping.
Directed by Nancy Carlin, the play digs into our thirst for communication and understanding, for the perfect bond, only to assert that it’s the very insatiability of that desire, that niggling little part of our psyche that won’t be quelled by a seemingly ideal romance or flawless invention, that makes us human. Yet if we’re cursed to a lifetime of unmet needs, mismatched relationships, George’s outlook in “The Watson Intelligence” is nonetheless rosy. Her characters keep trying anyway.
Those who saw George’s last piece at Shotgun, “Precious Little,” in 2012, already know she’s a dramatist of uncommon skill. When Eliza (Sarah Mitchell) unloads her banal romantic frustrations on the robot (Brady Morales-Woolery) she invented to provide emotional comfort, the play’s themes never leap out at you to declare themselves; George constructs them obliquely, whimsically, trusting her audience’s intelligence.
She segues elegantly from the near-future to past worlds, with each of a trio of actors (which also includes Mike Mize) playing a similar sort of role — unctuous assistant, sharp critic, clueless braggart — in each era. Puzzling out the way scenes interlock is one of the show’s top joys. It’s a bit like a Sherlock Holmes mystery; only here, his Doctor Watson (also Morales-Woolery) is the sleuth.
Carlin’s cast is sterling all around, but Mitchell in particular excels. She’s saddled with much of the play’s exposition, as well as its most scientific language, when Eliza details why she wanted to invent a robot to whom you could vent. But Mitchell, with laser-focused delivery, makes each new phrase of that text, no matter how technical, into an opportunity to show yet another angle of her character’s essential warmth — a quality you don’t see in Eliza at all in her first few prickly lines: “We couldn’t have a conversation about anything that was important to me, but that didn’t distinguish him from 98 percent of the other human beings on the planet.” As the play rolls on, she’s so disarmingly natural, so appealing with her character’s forthrightness, that all stagey contrivances of theatergoing melt away.
“Precious Little,” which offered many refractions on the limitations of language, was a wonderful play, but it was so short that it almost felt like George ended the scenario practically as soon as she created it. That’s not the case here. The play ends on a coda that dispenses with all the timetraveling, all the magical coincidences and inventions, and just lets two inept but earnest humans sit and try to hash things out — something that, much like excellent live theater, machines will never be able to replace. Lily Janiak is The San Francisco Chronicle’s theater critic. Email: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LilyJaniak