Review – The Good Girl

Who would have thought that a sci-fi black comedy about a malfunctioning sex-bot could go so deep? PONY.CHILD’s The Good Girl, by Emilie Collyer, is a well-written, skilfully performed show that raises questions about gender, human rights, artificial intelligence, elitism, greed, desire and censorship, all in a tidy fifty-minute festival slot.

VCA Theatre graduates Olivia Monticciolo and James O’Connell play a sex-bot carer/madam and maintenance man respectively. When the maintenance man discovers an unreported defect in the robot, he blackmails the sex-bot carer into revealing the truth: she has become incredibly popular because of her human-like faults. For his silence, the sex-bot carer agrees to bake for the maintenance man daily, and their relationship blossoms despite the stifling simplicity and regulation of the futuristic world that they live in. But things begin to breakdown as they become tainted by the un-humanitarian and un-robotarian crimes they commit.

The actors’ complicity was strong throughout the entire performance, as they expertly painted the world of the play through the text. Hilarious one-liners about anti gender-discrimination laws and man’s desire for subservient, obedient, vocally appreciative robot-lady lovers are peppered liberally throughout this clear, complex, crystallised story: big ideas, with an even bigger heart. The set was sterile and minimalistic, a somewhat aesthetically clichéd, if forgivable, depiction of a future totalitarian world. Speaking of which, the only negative was the cramped audience space: shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, an uncomfortable intimacy with your theatre-going neighbours. Perhaps it was a metaphor for the claustrophobic life the middle-class citizens of the future will lead? Or perhaps it was just an unfortunate Fringe-venue oversight.

Smart, slick and funny, The Good Girl reveals a future that asks a lot of questions and gives the present (and the people watching it) a lot to answer for. The conflict of ambition versus morality is at the forefront in this tale of crying sex-bots, and the people who love them.