Review: Distant Memories of the Near Future ★★★★
A heartwarming dystopia exploring connection in an AI near-future.
★★★★ Distant Memories of the Near Future | Arcola Theatre | 12-30 November 2024
Within a stage shaded in darkness, a single torch illuminates a tiny toy astronaut, casting a lonely shadow in space. The narrator poses a question: ‘It’s okay, isn’t it, to not want to be…alone?’ This puppet, perched upon a lecturn of purple meteor rock, seems utterly alone. It is not until galaxy lights flicker on, showering the night sky in stunning starlight, that we remember connection is already and always, all around us.
Distant Memories of the Near Future is something rare: a heartwarming dystopia. The show explores our search for connection, love and meaning in a world shaped by consumerism, AI and corporate control of our lives. Written and performed by David Head, and directed by Laura Killeen, it’s told as a series of vignettes relayed by its main performer: stories of people (an astronaut, a tech mogul, a poet, among others) searching for connection and meaning, in a world where corporate-controlled algorithms claim to provide these while leaving us perpetually unfulfilled. Interspersed with cynically witty ads from this near future, this solo show asks us to consider what it means to not be alone. Developed and previewed at the Rosemary Branch Theatre, Memories premiered at Summerhall as part of the 2023 Edinburgh Fringe, where it was a finalist for the Off West End: Best New Writing award, before transferring to Arcola Theatre this year with producers Sprig Rose Productions.
Memories strikes an impressive balance between fearful cynicism, grounded in the brutality of the corporate hellscape we live in, and a deeply optimistic sense of hope stemming from our inherent connectedness with each other. The show manages to tackle our loss of privacy in a digital age, the takeover of creative work by AI, and the increasing privatized corporate control of our lives, making jokes about “your 10 minutes of mandatory advertising” sponsored by your government in partnership with Amazon. Yet these jabs never become numbingly depressing. Instead, they’re balanced by a strong belief in the essential connectedness of people, and an unshakeable faith that none of us are ever truly disconnected from the world around us.
This thematic strength, conveyed through the show’s tightly written script, is supported by Head’s subtle physical performances as narrator. His body language morphs to suit each vignette he tells, stepping from TED talk entrepreneur to struggling artist with an ease that evokes the body language of his verbally-constructed characters. Memories also avoids boring audiences with too much of the same story-telling style by breaking up its spoken sections with its snappy digital ads. These become a clever way of revealing its world to us, and planting key bits of exposition for later, while keeping us immersed in this near-future world. By combining both spoken and multimedia storytelling in this way, the show effectively uses its form to articulate its questions about human connection in a digitally-dominated world, while keeping us interested in what’s happening in the room.
It’s worth noting that Head’s text is very literary in nature, tying together multiple viewpoints, characters, and stories in a structure more reminiscent of a novel than of a traditional theatre script. The style of his prose unfolds with an essay-adjacent formality that sometimes feels as though we know where the show’s going before it gets there. Memories relies first and foremost on language – as opposed to on spectacle or physical performance – to wrap us up into its Orwellian universe. And while these two reviewers were enraptured by the poignancy imbued within his constructed style, we know it might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
If you’re in search of an evening of dystopian love stories, told through seemingly disparate accounts only to be found inextricably linked, look no further. Distant Memories of the Near Future will assure you that while your fears of a destabilising AI-dominated future are well-founded, you are never alone in the darkness. You are but one star in a sky full of constellations. Memories runs until November 30th at Arcola Theatre, and we urge you to take a step into the near future before it ends.
Mary Tooley (she/her) is a performer, producer, facilitator, and theatre maker with a passion for cultivating collaborative and creative spaces of care and community. As a scholar focussed on the political and personal potential of practices of feminist refusal, she programs provocative socially-engaged work and women’s workshops that challenge the idea of what theatre can be. Her performance practice finds majesty in the mess. She created and starred in two comedic participatory one-woman productions called Belly Flop and Polish Me Up? at BLOC Venue in London. She is a Venue Manager for Box Office & Reception at Wilton’s Music Hall. She produced Peopling the Palaces 2024, an eight-day arts festival curated by Lois Weaver with Queen Mary University of London and Air Supply. She is a facilitator with Almeida Theatre and Coram Shakespeare, and an Embedded Evaluator with Half Moon Theatre. She will be performing in Walking Each Other Home with Stacy Makishi at the Southbank Centre. She loves Burt Bacharach, tarot, MGM musicals, and ghost stories. Originally from Toronto, she lives and works in East London.
Hamish Hutchison-Poyntz is a theatre practitioner, writer and reviewer, and aspiring director/producer. He recently completed his MA in Theatre and Performance at Queen Mary, University of London, specializing in the use of games and participatory theatre to respond to the climate crisis. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, he now lives in London’s East End. Besides theatre, he loves games, spooky audiodramas, and good cats (which is to say, all cats).
