Over in downtown Brooklyn, tiny toy robots are perched at random within the Polonsky Shakespeare Center–attached to staircase bannisters, to columns in the 299-seat auditorium, to edges of the snack bar–where Theatre For a New Audience and Rattlestick Theater are co-producing the premiere of the smart, frequently droll We Are Your Robots.
Premiering on Sunday and billed as a musical, We Are Your Robots is styled like a song cycle, or more accurately here as a whimsical monologue interspersed and illuminated by songs. The 80-minute work’s book and lyrics are written by Ethan Lipton, who speaks and sings most of the words. Lipton also is credited as one of the composers for the songs written along with fellow band members Eben Levy, Ian Riggs and Vito Dieterle, who respectively play guitar, bass and saxophone, among other instruments.
A dozen years ago, Lipton and these same musician-performers created the Obie Award-winning No Place to Go, a similarly-structured humorous monologue with music relating how Lipton’s business was relocating to Mars and expressing his anxieties about possible unemployment.
This time around, Lipton ruminates about robots. Or rather, Lipton acts as a robot spokesman for the growing population of artificial intelligence devices that are becoming indispensable to our lives. Noting that robots are designed to be helpful, Lipton asks, “What do you want, my human friends?” The purpose of this event, Lipton explains, is to reassure people that robots will not murder mankind someday and more significantly to obtain from us a better idea of what we really need from them. It is wiser for humanity to fear the likes of climate change and fascism than robots, he suggests. Mozart and Noam Chomsky are among names popping up and concepts such as consciousness and immortality are treated to playful humor.
The ten or so numbers that Lipton, Levy, Riggs, and Dieterle perform are variously jazzy and bluesy in style; their warm, intimate instrumentals and vocal harmonies anchored by Lipton’s light baritone growl. Among musical highlights is the lovely, New Age-y sounding “Where Are You Now?,” a touching call-and-response song between humpbacked whales seeking each other in the depths of the Pacific. The realization that We Are Your Robots dips into the ocean is indicative of Lipton’s free-ranging narration that somehow manages to stick (mostly) to matters of artificial intelligence. The show’s content is upbeat for the greater part, and its darkest point is ironically mitigated by comforting assurances and cheerful images of puppies and kittens.
A middle-aged fellow sporting gray whiskers and an amiably sardonic personality, Lipton talks about these heady social and philosophical issues to the audience in an easy, conversational manner. Dressed identically in tailored bluish-gray suits with squiggly detailing by designer Alejo Vietti, Lipton and his three associates perform mostly upon individual yellow-colored circles that contrast against the deep blue background of Lee Jellinek’s setting, which serves as a large easel for a series of still and moving images pertaining to robots devised by projection designer Katherine Freer. No doubt Leigh Silverman, the director, strategized those visuals as well as the patterned lighting by Adam Honoré and a sound design of electronic blips and burbles by Nevin Steinberg.
Should this description make the show seem too sophisticated to be much fun, let’s note that in the middle of it all, a little Roomba vacuum whizzes out onstage to be greeted as “Grandpa Morrie!” by Lipton, who notes how quickly robots have been evolving. Later, Lipton and his robotic ancestor even share a little duet. Nice moments like that and a particularly benevolent closing number, “Eighty Percent of the Time,” that wishes the audience a reasonably happy lifetime, are among the quirky charms of We Are Your Robots.
We Are Your Robots opened November 24, 2024, at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center and runs through December 8. Tickets and information: tfana.org
