Theatre review: Immortal Variables asks questions of tech and elitism in a world ruled by algorithms

Immortal Variables Nine Years Theatre & Hsing Legend Youth Theatre

The Ngee Ann Kongsi Theatre@Funan
Friday, 8pm

This Chinese box of a play written and directed by Nine Years Theatre co-founder Nelson Chia is a talky, somewhat abstract treatise on the meaning of free will in a world governed by supercomputers.

In an unspecified Asian country in the near future, its president (Howie Chu) has been abducted by a crew of mysterious rebels.

Called the Eight Immortals, they want the president to hand over the password to a new program he has developed that can influence people’s thought patterns – a slightly more sophisticated version of today’s advertising algorithms which already steer consumers in myriad unconscious ways.

The rebels want to deactivate the program before it goes online. Amid the stand-off, the two sides debate political ethics, who gets to represent the people and the possibility of a government without hierarchy.

Immortal Variables is a collaboration between Singapore’s Nine Years Theatre and Taiwan’s Hsing Legend Youth Theatre, the youth wing of Contemporary Legend Theatre, which is known in Taiwan for pushing the boundaries of the Chinese opera form.

Here, the Taiwan troupe gets limited use of its opera skills.

A fight scene at the start is forgettable, but Chu has a nice moment at the end when his nasal recitation of a poem by Tang dynasty poet Lu Dongbin ends the production on a transformative note.

Apart from Nine Years Theatre co-founder Mia Chee, who portrays the sage and scheming adviser playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers, there is a certain unnaturalness to – and overacting by – the young cast.

It could be a holdover from the Chinese opera form. Here, though, it alienates the audience.

Still, Chia’s script keeps things interesting cerebrally, with twist after twist revealed, hinting at past relationships and possible betrayals.

There are moments, though, when the rapid shifting of allegiances tire. The audience is always looking at the internal machinations of elites and, because there is hardly any real reference to ordinary people down the chain, it can feel self-contained and without any stakes – as proven later in the play in a needless reveal about gunshot wounds.

Then there are the Eight Immortals, legendary characters in Chinese mythology who have been the subject of many paintings, sculptures and writings.

Chia has astutely noted their diversity – man, woman, rich, poor and so on – which allows him to creatively position them here as a sort of collective acting as advocate for the people and a check against one-man rule.

It is worth noting that in Mandarin, the phrase Chia has chosen for the president is Zong Cai, which more accurately translates to chief executive.

The parallels with the tyranny of big tech are transparent, and there is a pragmatism to the solution that he ultimately proposes, emphasising not on stopping the mind-control program but finding a multipolarity where influence might come from multiple sources.

The centring on a poem is a nice touch. In the end, perhaps all that can be hoped for is that those fluent in the new language of technology have also had enough humanistic training or interest to remember that people are not just statistics on a screen.

As one character remarks, the notion of privacy is a debate that has already been had and decided.

With the advent of social media, people’s capacity for self-definition without undue external influence – if it was ever possible – might be, too. What is left is merely balance.

Book It/Immortal Variables

Where: Wild Rice @ Funan, 107 North Bridge Road
When: Saturday, 3 and 8pm; Sunday, 3pm
Admission: $35 to $65 from Sistic (go to www.sistic.com.sg or call 6348-5555)
Info: Go to str.sg/iqFH