Theatre review: The Human Computer at the Battersea Arts Centre
Battersea Arts Centre (the BAC) was buzzing on Saturday night as patrons of the Arts queued up for tickets to events featured in its Scratch Festival.
We were here to see Will Adamsdale in The Human Computer, a one-man show about one man who knows nothing about computers.
It always felt like it was going to be one of those shows that didn't quite live up to expectations, and we weren't proven wrong.
The show kicked off with a few wry observations about computers, slightly knocked for six by some banter with a front row audience member who said it was either her cancer or her computer that was going to kill her. It's hard to recover from that sort of audience participation, although Adamsdale bravely tried.
The first segment worked reasonably well, as we were taken through his first tentative forays into the world of computers, and the naive cardboard scenery and props were a relative joy, as he brought some of the basics of a Windows-based operating system to life on the stage. There were also a few references to Macs, for those who might have otherwise felt marginalised.
Things progressed nicely as an audience member was put in charge of a large pointing arrow cursor on a stick and told to navigate around the computer that Adamsdale was now 'inside'. Unfortunately the few 'applications' that the audience were allowed to choose between were loosely based on Adamsdale's 'talents'. These ranged from a rather pointless tale of why he once hit a girl with a stick, to frankly poor Geordie accents, via a lame comedy dance routine.
We pretty much logged out of Adamsdale's live recreation of our desktop when the plot took an inexplicable dive into an ill-conceived battle against a spider virus. This took Adamsdale's only-person-computer-illiterate-enough-to-save-the-world character on a trek across the screen accompanied by his English-voiced arrow cursor, and American drawling pointing finger icon, with a love story involving the hourglass icon thrown in for good measure.
The character of a Scottish soldier named McAfee did however raise a wry smile the first few times he appeared as an icon to make a post-modern statement on the tribulations of security software.
The Human Computer may appeal to theatregoers in the rare position of never having used a computer, and clearly did appeal to the girl in the audience who felt the need to give a short braying laugh at every opportunity, seemingly regardless of the action on stage. We left, feeling that it had been a missed opportunity, with the rich comedic potential of something so ubiquitous as a computer operating system having only had its surface scratched.
I was mainly miffed that there was no helpful paperclip character, darting on stage ever few seconds to offer helpful advice such as "it looks as if you're writing a letter"...
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Al WarmanAl Warman is a Digital Content Producer at Which? specialising in consumer electronics and technology.
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