East Is South: A Theatrical Exploration of AI's Ethical Dilemmas and Human Consciousness

East Is South theatre review -- techno-thriller asks big questions about AI

There's nothing remarkable about the grey, carpeted interview room in which East Is South is set. Nothing, that is, except the curious metal ring protruding from the table. What's it for, Lena, a young coder, enquires of the woman sitting opposite her? "Don't worry about that," she replies. Handcuffs, it turns out. And Lena should be worried. Beau Willimon's new drama is set in a secret facility dedicated to developing a powerful self-educating AI that looks set to outstrip human intelligence and possibly become sentient. But it appears that Lena and her colleague (and lover) Sasha, two programmers brought in to work on the "kill-code" that would halt it if it ever escaped, may have overridden the system and "liberated" the AI onto the internet. Ungoverned, who knows what it might do. So we're in a cat and mouse game between Lena, Sasha and two National Security Agency operatives -- Samira (good cop) and Tom (bad cop). Willimon has a great writing pedigree -- he created the US version of House of Cards, for example -- but this new piece is a curious, stubbornly inert beast: part police procedural, part philosophical enquiry. It's packed with fascinating debates about AI, consciousness, the divine, meaning, paradox -- and about our instinct to anthropomorphise entities beyond our understanding. Questions swirl and bubble. Would a super-consciousness be a threat to humanity or a saviour? Does it matter? "Maybe biological evolution is just the precursor to technological evolution, right?" says Lena at one point. "What if this? God didn't create the universe. It's the universe's project to create God." The trouble is, these richly interesting ideas come packaged in dense flashbacks, digressions and break-out scenes, weighty with debate and jargon, that hold up progress in the plot. Tension keeps dissipating and Willimon's very smart use of a thriller format to express the momentous point we have reached keeps getting bogged down. His characters neatly embody ideas and contradictions, not least the urge to believe in something bigger than ourselves and the way lived experience and emotions impact our thinking. Lena (Kaya Scodelario) grew up in a strict Mennonite community and is clearly haunted by both her traumatic personal life and the loss of a defining belief; Sasha (Luke Treadaway) is a Russian dissident who gave up piano when he realised he couldn't be perfect and who plays Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor to Lena as an example of reaching for the divine. Their interrogator Samira (Nathalie Armin) is of Sufi heritage and project manager Ari (Cliff Curtis) a complex mix of Jewish and Māori. The desire for meaning is common to all of them -- except perhaps Tom (Alec Newman) who mainly believes in not quitting. But despite strong performances in Ellen McDougall's production, with Scodelario and Treadaway in particular bringing a mix of wariness, defiance and intense vulnerability to Lena and Sasha, they struggle to achieve real definition. So much potential here and such an important subject, but sadly the play feels as though it got stuck in "loading" mode.

East Is South review - weighty AI drama takes aim at humanity's biggest questions

Hampstead theatre, London The actors, especially Kaya Scodelario, work hard with Beau Willimon's plot, but are hampered by a leaden, tension-light production House of Cards writer Beau Willimon's new play East Is South deals with the ethics and advancement of AI. But despite the transformative subject matter, Ellen McDougall's production has as much propulsion as a car in reverse. Skins actor Kaya Scodelario plays Lena, a former Mennonite and gifted coder, who is wrestling with the expanding consciousness of Logos, the software her company has developed. We meet her as she is preparing to be questioned by the workplace bigwigs who watch her from the upper level of Alex Eales's two-tiered sciene-inspired set as if she is a caged animal. Lena and her lover, Sasha (Luke Treadaway) are being investigated after a security breach. For a fleeting second, the tension in McDougall's direction is sky-high. But, that's as far as East Is South goes in terms of sparking anxiety. Willimon's writing is weighty and thick. There are references to religion, love, abuse and deceit, and the play attempts to answer the big, complicated question of what makes something human. But the pace of the drama slows and sags. Scodelario does her best with a soulless role and at one point she looks believably on the verge of tears. But the language of the play is peculiar. The romantic scenes between Lena and Sasha have no heat; the pair stand awkwardly beside each other as if they're meeting for the first time. The interview scenes are void of any fire. If Willimon hoped to use his play to show AI as a potential threat to humanity, his scenes would need to have more fear sewn in. The risks Logos presents are nothing new; we already know that AI's power is multiplying by the day, and that if this continues, it could possibly become free-thinking. All the emotional and moral issues Willimon poses feel well-trodden and are laid out plainly in his script. In 2025, there is an abundance of plays about technological advances, including the considerably more fascinating More Life over at the Royal Court. Next to such works East Is South seems unnecessary and uninspired. If you're looking to be freshly frightened by AI's perils in a drama, perhaps go to another theatre, elsewhere.