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East
Is South
Hampstead
Theatre Spring 2025
Beau Willimon’s play East is South at Hampstead Theatre pitches itself as a thriller about two programmers, Sasha and Lena, being interrogated by National Security Agency operatives.
There's been a security alert over an attempt to manually override the 'killcode' that is supposed to block the operation of any artificial intelligence escaping human control.
Most of the action takes place in an interrogation room that occasionally in flashbacks doubles as a home setting where characters get to know each other.
In some of those scenes, we see a growing attraction and love between Lena (Kaya Scodelario) and Sasha (Luke Treadway), something they felt had to remain secret for fear it might jeopardise their jobs.
Above the interview room is the observation room where the technician (Aaron Gill) sits at a computer monitoring the interactions below. Standing alongside him for much of the performance, intently watching a screen of the same events, is agent Olsen (Alec Newman).
The programmer Lena is denied a lawyer and at times kept alone locked in the 'interview' room, even being denied access to a toilet, though the government agents can see her shouting that she needs 'to pee.' She feels forced to urinate in a snack bowl.
The other programmer Sasha, a former Russian dissident who had dreamed of becoming a pianist, also gets a rough time with agent Olsen telling him he intends to break his fingers.
Agent Samira (Nathalie Armin) is less ruthless but her questions trigger uncomfortable memories for those she is interviewing.
Lena recalls being punished in her childhood Mennonite community for a sexual encounter at the age of twelve with a fifteen-year-old. She describes being locked alone in a barn with just a chamber pot and water for three days followed by her father burning her with a poker.
The officers point out that all of this was wrongly kept secret when she was being vetted for her job.
At times characters will reflect on religion, philosophy and artificial intelligence. Lena, who claims not to be religious, creates her own version of prayers, one of which ends with 'East is South'.
She also tries to teach the artificial intelligence she 'anthropomorphised' and calls Aggie to dodge the killcode through the use of 'contradictions' of phrases such as 'East is South'.
The heaviest dabbler in philosophy is the line manager Abrams (Cliff Curtis) who mentions Spinoza, Nietzsche, Plato, and Deleuse among others. Religion regularly traverses the plot. At one point in a Lena flashback, she, along with the rest of the cast, sings the hymn 'Bound for Canaan.'
The hymn along with snippets of conversation are listenable and entertaining but the play does feel a bit unfocused. We get to know Lena and Samira a bit more than the others but never enough to care what is happening to them.
The rest of the characters seem to be given little more than a label that doesn't appear to add anything to the show. Thus we are told Abrams is a Jewish Māori and that Samira is a Sufi lesbian.
The discussion of philosophy, religion, and artificial intelligence doesn’t seem to have much purpose though it does allow one character to ask, 'What if... God didn’t create the universe. It's the universe's project to create God.'
However, many lines such as The eternal is temporary. The infinite is finite' can even be a bit distracting.
The play could have been an opportunity to explore the topical subject of AI or the abuse of the security services, both of which are touched upon. It doesn’t do either of these. Instead, we get a lightweight thriller that lacks any dramatic tension and prefers to tell rather than show.
Keith
McKenna
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East Is South - Hampstead Theatre 2025