Òran Mór, Glasgow
Four stars
In every dream home there is heartache for the couple at the centre of Amy Conway’s play, the latest in A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s current season of lunchtime theatre. Henry is almost caught with his pants down when the buzzer goes at the door of his flat, but it’s nothing compared to what happens next.
The woman at the door may look like the spitting image of Henry’s ex girlfriend Liz, but behind the belted raincoat and the hyper efficient persona is the sort of all access dream girl that initially at least seems even better than the real thing. When things don’t go to programme, however, Henry’s actions are a whole lot more extreme than simply pulling the plug. And when the buzzer goes again, reality bites in disturbingly similar ways in the flesh.
The all-encroaching rise of AI is very much on the agenda just now, as it has been long before science fiction became fact. The humanisation and sexualisation of robots too has been the stuff of pulp fiction for decades. While many of these amazing stories have come from the fantasies of men across the ages, Conway’s play offers up a woman’s eye view on some of the dangerous misogyny at play in what we used to call the future.
What starts off as sit-com style interplay between Henry and Liz in Ben Standish’s production sees a familiar scenario gradually evolve into something darker. This makes for a pair of nuanced performances by Sam Stopford as Henry and Anna Russell-Martin as the objects of his affection in a punchy study of what can happen when men become disconnected from the real world.
The Herald, September17th 2026
Ends
Comments