Writer: David Sear
Director: Rosina Piovani
David Sear’s dystopian tech thriller Continuity (7) opens with a turbulent priest delivering a line from Exodus, a conceit which generally portends events of biblical significance. The Divinity issuing godly instructions here is not Moses’s, but a corporate Mephistopheles offering a decidedly dodgy bargain: lend us your body, and we promise you everlasting life.
The devil, of course, is in the detail, in this case, the 594 pages of small print. Eternal life comes at the cost of a monthly subscription for those further down the line. Think Faustus rewritten as a terms-and-conditions fever dream. While the piece promises dark Black Mirror-style satire, it struggles to engage, partly because the characters emerge as cyphers for debating points rather than individuals with an inner life. Still, there is much to think about here, and Sear’s determination to trash tech bros as much as humanly possible offers a certain sense of catharsis.
It is 2034. Stevie (Martin Maynard) breaks his back in a car accident and finds himself stuck in a wheelchair in Coventry (perhaps the budget did not extend to Silicon Valley). The man is on painkillers that either send him to sleep or make him angry, but at least he is off the antidepressants. Stevie’s stoical wife, Alex (Catherine Walston), is the archetype of excessive caution and risk aversion. Think a middle-class Polonius from Hamlet. She offers love, support, and sensible advice, which generally amounts to avoiding anything men in white coats suggest.
The couple’s non-binary child, 16-year-old Dylan (Asher Guy), is the voice of childlike enthusiasm for life, though their attachment to chatting to 50-year-olds on Tinder suggests they are not as naïve as they appear (and that some unfortunate parental disengagement is at play). Stevie’s mum, Lesley (Geraldine Hindley, who looks the same age as her son and boasts fabulous pink Doc Martens), represents a moral choice to live life to the fullest and then accept death graciously.
Enter a billionaire named Y (Christian Burton in panto villain mode), who jokes that he chose his name to get one up on Elon Musk’s X. Y heads a philanthropic investment fund composed of “Jeff, Bill, Elon and me” that aims to improve longevity. For reasons that are not entirely clear, but involve listening in on the family’s conversations through Amazon’s Alexa, Y determines Stevie is a good candidate for a revolutionary new medical therapy involving “continuity cells”. The treatment will give him a new spine, fix his dodgy eyesight, and promise eternal life.
“Why turn down a free ticket to immorality?” Y asks. Well, there are hitches. The previous six patients have all experienced “rejection issues”, and a horde of religious zealots and Q-Anon fantasists want to slaughter anyone who takes the treatment. Somewhere along the line, Tony Blair is involved. Oh, and Stevie will become a walking, talking Ring camera (one suspects Sear dislikes Amazon products) whose eyesight will be livestreamed back to corporate HQ.
Add into the mix Y’s chief henchman, Doctor Cameron who represents scientific amorality (Michael Flintoff plays him as a mashup of Gollum from The Hobbit and Dr Evil from the Austin Powers film series), and Morgan, a troubled priest with a knack for getting past the security desk, (Iain Mahony seems as confused as to his presence onstage as the audience are).
The problem with such archetypal characters is that they feel more like contrasting opinions in a debating circle than real people. Hindley’s Lesley has almost nothing to do, and the primary purpose of Guy’s Dylan seems to be to take a pop at social media excesses. Maynard does his best with the conflicted Stevie, and the play flares briefly to life in the anguished love-hate bickering with Walston’s excellent Alex. Much of the rest feels like an extended dramatised episode of Radio 4’s The Moral Maze. A final act slice of fourth-wall-breaking meta theatrics does not add much to the drama. The ending satisfies at a viscerally cathartic level, if not a moral one.
Director Rosina Piovani sets the action within a square frame of four chairs, which evokes a claustrophobic boxing ring in which Stevie is pushed from pillar to post. The piece raises challenging ethical questions, but it is hard to engage emotionally with such detached characters. Ultimately, you may not care what Stevie decides to do with his life. Surely miracles ought to be a little less mundane than this.
Runs until 22 November 2025
