Trying to summarize Experiment Human into one sentence is a nightmarish proposal, but let’s give it a go: two humanoid creatures called Monkion abduct beloved actor Benedict Cumberbatch in an attempt to understand humanity.
While technically accurate, whatever you’re picturing based on this synopsis is likely not close to the show a sold-out audience at the Old Fire Station witnessed last Thursday evening. To paint a clearer picture, it would be important to also note that the hour’s runtime was also packed with physical comedy, improv and odd little flights of fancy.
As we theatregoers file in, two bodies lie under sheets on stage, unmoving. Eventually, the lights dim and from beneath one of the sheets, a figure springs to life barefoot in a long white nightgown. We soon learn this is Monkion, which in the tradition of many a children’s tv show, appears to be both their name and what they are. Monkion, bold and pushy, is soon joined by their timid and put-upon partner in crime, and probable sibling (played by real-life sisters Maya Hallpike and Rosa Thomas, who also created and produced the show). Both Monkion are dressed in white, their faces paled and chiselled with black and white face paint. The other blanketed figure, we soon, is Cumberbatch, desiccating in our anti-heroes’ isolated attic home.
Experiment Human is one of those shows that feels still in development and likely always will. It’s made its way here after an acclaimed run at the Edinburgh Fringe, where it won the Scotsman Award. It’s a hodgepodge of influences where the plot takes a backseat. Instead, it’s composed of various sequences, including one in which Benedict Cumberbatch is replaced in the public eye with a random bystander (played, courageously, by a game audience member). Audience participation is a feature throughout the show, ramping up towards the end. But to the credit of the performers it feels benevolent and never mandatory. There is a storyline to the full piece, but it follows a sort of squishy dream logic. In short, it’s a very long hour, but in a good way.
Much is left intentionally unclear: are the Monkion supposed to be something actually inhuman, or two horribly isolated and confused individuals? One scene involves Monkion buying a ticket to see Cumberbatch perform live to little fanfare, implying the whole otherworldly element is an internal fantasy on their part. With this reading, the show reminded me of Philip Ridley’s 1991 play The Pitchfork Disney, also a fantastical but menacing work about two isolated adult siblings spinning off into a dreamworld. The Pitchfork Disney stirred controversy for its deliberately unpleasant characters and scenarios and became known as a defining work of ‘in-yer-face-theatre’, a 90s drama movement that is exactly what it sounds like.
Experiment Human shares its fearless and confronting sensibility, but where The Pitchfork Disney is intentionally repulsive, this show aims to draw its audience in. So much of creating a unique and otherworldly environment like this is simply down to the actors refusing to be embarrassed and allowing the audience to reject them if they please. In this way, they had the audience in the palm of their hand.
Tonally, it reminded me of the puppet-based horror sketch show Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared or one of Charlie Kaufman’s lighter movies, a feel-weird surrealist comedy that’s lowkey disturbing and high-key comedic.
I would have liked more of a sense of threat and horror to the kidnapped Cumberbatch; the viscerality of having a body on stage felt like a wealth of discomfort that was not fully mined. The show was at times broadly rather than deeply weird.
I also wanted more of a cohesive internal logic to Monkion, who spends a portion of the show asking the audience what certain words mean, but the level of vocabulary they’ve been using up until this point makes it seem like they would already know the answers.
But that said, that same sequence was ultimately one of the great pleasures of the show: being in this seemingly spontaneous and open-ended conversation with these otherworldly characters, Monkion like a politician taking questions. It’s exactly the kind of impossible-but-immediate situation that highlights the magic of absurdist theatre.
Experiment Human next plays at the Brighton Fringe this May. Should you go see it? I would say yes, not just because it’s weird, but because its weirdness will make you think, and feel like you had an evening you couldn’t get anywhere else.