Highrise – Digital Recording: The Space, Online

Reviewer: Christine Stanton

Writer/Director: Jacob Kay

“Unnerving but not Unfathomable”

3 / 5

Pepperjack is a contractor – left in charge of a desolate, clinical highrise building, keeping everything ticking along and running correctly. His only company is Cassandra, his AI assistant, helping him track the ridgly controlled schedule that keeps him on task at all times. Only once he has completed his work is he free – but what is freedom with no other humans around and the outside world off limits?

Writer, director and performer Jacob Kay (Pepperjack) uses his script to unpick the rapid advancements in technology, and the reliance humanity has on it within their day to day lives. Initially the dystopian narrative feels futuristic and unfathomable (with hints of Orwell’s 1984 such as the unyielding schedule and ever watching eyes), but it scarily isn’t that unimaginable in a more modern world. The constant dependence and interactions with the AI assistant aren’t too dissimilar to Siri or Alexa, making a script such as this ever more relevant, and incredibly creepy.

Pepperjack occasionally recounts memories of his past, wistfully reminiscing of trees and riverbanks, yearning to go back outside and go back to how things were, but Cassandra (Helen Baird) is strict and unforgiving, her robotic nature there for one purpose only, no matter how much she appears as his friend and confidant. Slowly it becomes apparent that Cassandra is more in control than even Pepperjack realises – and it’s seemingly too hard and too late to stop her. Again, the parallels of staying inside, reliant on machines all day, rather than being outside, also feels like a comment on today’s society – encouraging the audience to look inward and maybe step back from their screens and enjoy the real world while you still can.

Both Baird and Kay are good performers, who juggle the power balances of their characters well, utilising the various shifts to show the progression of the storyline. Pepperjack’s transition from content to chaotic is well presented, with Kay clearly showing the gradual breakdown without the need for appearance changes or prop assistance. Baird’s Cassandra is brilliantly robotic, her sinister deliverance of some lines immediately changing the atmosphere and bringing a chill to the stage. It would be great if there was some more context as to Pepperjack’s arrival in the Highrise, or how he became to be so dependent on Cassandra. The backstory would not only help to further the narrative but also to solidify the audience connection with the character by making him more understood.

With AI becoming more interlaced into society, the lines have become easily blurred with what’s ‘acceptable’ and what isn’t, what’s needed and what’s unnerving, so a show like Highrise is well timed and full of brilliant debates to be discussed after the show.

Digital Recording – The Space Online