A s we freewheel into the period of the self-driving cars and truck, we likewise go headlong into a set of ethical problems. For as long as there is the possibility of a mishap, whose security should the system prioritise– pedestrian or guest? Should it depend upon the age, number and profile of those included? Who gets to configure the computer systems and how specific are the directions?
Playwright Ben Norris takes this as a metaphor for unpredictability in basic. All it takes is a line of code to impact the behaviour of an automobile, simply as all it takes is a short-term choice to identify how our lives work out.
He pictures a relationship in all its inconsistent permutations, reversing and forwards through its course. Rowan (Cassie Bradley) is a geospatial engineer, who has actually battled hard for a profession that goes from maps to motor vehicles. Nic (Hannah van der Westhuysen) is a self-employed illustrator, whose anticapitalist way of life belies a fortunate past. They are at as soon as amazed and exasperated by each other’s worths.
In a series of fractured scenes, snapping greatly from one to the next in Sean Linnen’s icy cool production for Expense’s Mom, the stars have skilled control over the playwright’s quickfire exchanges, switching on a sixpence from intimate to wintry as the possibilities play out. They make a tight and persuading group.
However for all the briskness of the writing and fluidity of the staging below Holly Ellis’s skillfully basic lighting style, Auto-pilot is tricksy in its structure and oblique in its coding example. It feels less like a full-blooded drama than a brain-teaser we are welcomed to break.