Orpheus Ex Machina

Orpheus is here cast as a serial blogger much-loved by the city of London for the dulcet tones of her opinions concerning the apparently dire state of things. Machina turns out to be her laptop through which she tells of her saccharine reality. When her husband is murdered in an incident of petty crime, she blames the city she has been so gentle to. To spite it for its ingratitude, she obsessively types up his life so he is reincarnated in cyberspace.

Orpheus Ex Machina is a crude shard of the purer, more relevant play it tries to be. The script is sporadically slick, although for the most part it seems as though the story has been moulded around clever sentences, as opposed to the other way round. The characters get lost behind the histrionic grandiloquence of the performers whose acting carries the bitter flavour of textbook styles, and unfortunately the high vaults of the venue blankly absorb the heavy-handed dialogue.

Whilst it may have made sense on paper, Orpheus Ex Machina fails on a production level, most likely due to the hubris of George Collie who, having written the play, also takes charge of its direction and the supporting role. As the pompous title may suggest, this is drama for the sake of drama, lacking both in pertinence and elegance.