Only Human - 4.5 out of 5 stars
PitchWhite Productions
TICKETS: Only Human Tickets | Holden Street Theatres
What does connection and care look like in an era of stress, isolation and loneliness? This is the premise behind Pitchwhite Productions’ Only Human, an original play written by Louise Hopewell.
The play opens with Ruth (Sharon Malujlo), an elderly woman recently settled into an aged care facility, and her stressed but loving daughter Jody (Monica Patteson) reminiscing over old photo albums. Ruth is lonely and bored in her new home, and Jody’s capacity to advocate for her mother is limited due to her own problems. It’s a situation that is heart wrenchingly familiar for many of us with relatives in nursing homes and is an increasingly important topic within our society’s aging population. A shared dissatisfaction in both women arises from the mismatch between the glossy advertising brochures, and the realities of the overworked and understaffed facility.
When the facility is “upgraded” to include personalised care robots for each resident, Jody’s insistence that humans should be caring for humans rings true to the audience. However, we also see the immediate improvement in Ruth’s quality of life thanks to her new robot carer Scallywag2040XY (Isiah Macaspac). Hopewell’s play raises a moral and ethical dilemma of what real care and connection looks like, and with the rise of generative AI and AI chatbots, it feels like a future that could be disturbingly close.
The relatable woes of a mother-daughter relationship brings humour and energy to the first half of the show. Ruth and Jody clash over both their memories and their individual, present-day situations, yet even during moments of exasperation, their affection for one another is obvious.
Monica Patteson’s performance as Jody is appropriately frazzled and deeply authentic, as her character balances a busy family life, a high-pressure work situation, and the fear of her mother’s mortality. Patterson’s realism is the anchor point of the play, highly relatable and a mirror to the audience’s reactions. She maintains a careful veneer of control at the beginning of the play, until she delivers a touching, teary-eyed confession to her mother about a problem she’s facing at work, which is uncomfortably relevant to the themes of the story. Patteson embodies Jody’s emotional state throughout the play, bringing authentic frustration, anger, devastation, and above all, a beautiful depiction of the love between mother and daughter. Jody’s questions about profit and ethics articulate the themes of the play in a way that doesn’t feel forced, thanks to Hopewell’s very human dialogue and Patteson’s truthful delivery.
Sharon Malujlo’s heartbreakingly vulnerable Ruth is the emotional core of the story. Her frustration and loneliness at the beginning of the play is palpable, and it is delightful to watch her come back to life with the support of Scallywag2040XY (or Scally, for a more approachable and fun nickname). Malujlo tracks Ruth’s physical and cognitive decline with painful accuracy across the course of the play, and it is devastating to watch. Malujlo’s subtle yet emotional performance embodies Ruth’s deep and complex relationships with both Jody and Scally. Malujlo’s depiction of frustration and aggression as Ruth’s dementia progresses is both powerful and distressing in its realism. As Ruth descends more and more into her dementia’s alternate reality, the audience is saddened by her loss of lucidity. Scally takes on a role that meets Ruth’s needs with care and dignity, yet feels inappropriate, and Malujlo’s performance of Ruth’s physical and mental vulnerability forces the audience to watch, with a mix of discomfort and resignation, as Ruth’s story ends in a way that feels inevitable.
Isiah Macaspac delivers a fantastic yet deeply uncomfortable performance as Scallywag2040XY. He inhabits the role with an inhuman physicality, his walking obviously mechanical, his hands permanently held at the ready, and his eyeline shifting in mathematical increments as he follows interactions between Jody and Ruth. Macaspac creates a carefully modulated voice and generic American accent, with a rhythm and intonation reminiscent of automated text-to-speech readers. Jody’s reaction upon meeting him - “Who is this, what is this?” - perfectly articulates the uncanny valley nature of Macaspac’s performance. While there are certainly moments of comic relief from Scally, much of the audience’s laughter arises from the cadence of his dialogue, unsettlingly familiar in a world now dominated by AI-generated text. He uses language and repeats phrases that are designed to be personable yet aren’t heartfelt. Hopewell’s extraordinarily clever writing has built upon the machine-created language and text conventions that we are now familiar with thanks to generative AI, and Macaspac brings just enough humanity to Scally that the audience begins to wonder if robots also deserve care and connection, just like Ruth.
Hannah Smith’s direction ably illustrates the themes of Hopewell’s story, without feeling heavy-handed or moralising. The set is well-designed, perfectly embodying the minimalist and compact nature of nursing home rooms. Ruth’s multiple moves into new rooms and wards, illustrated by simply rearranging the same furniture, also contributes to the sense that the facility is merely a business waiting for their clients to “vacate” the premises. The lighting is simple but effective, clearly demarcating scene changes and adding to the tension of several dramatic scenes. The music, composed by Amelia Rooney, grows more dissonant and haunting throughout the play and contributes to the uneasy atmosphere as the stakes rise.
Only Human is a deep exploration of moral and technological challenges that we may be facing in the not-too-distant future. The questions that this play elicits will leave you thinking long after the actors’ final bow.
- Georjette Mercer
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