David Bowers-Mason (Robot), Andrew Lyall, Cooper Hughes, Alice Kimber-Bell and Brendan West, star in the production, Rossums Universal Robots, at the Meteor, August 12 to 29.

Review: Rossum's Universal Robots (R.U.R.)

Who: Hamilton Performing Arts Company

When: Wednesday 12 August 2015

Where: Meteor Theatre

Written by: Karel Capek and translated by David Wyllie

Director: Jeremy Bell

Producer: Russell Armitage

Here's a play which leaps across time and cultural difference, as if a 20th century Shakespeare was writing for the 21st.

It deals with conflict and humanity as freshly in 2015 as it did when it opened in Prague in 1921.

What is fascinating is that it challenges the philosophy of the few deciding what is good for others in ways that still provoke intense discussion.

Its disconcerting other face, though, is that it is still bloody good entertainment, a gripping yarn, a complex of wonderful melodrama and shockingly pertinent drama.

That caused some confusion for this audience with some responses resulting in disconcerting laughter, suggesting that it was more familiar with the comedic signals of light weight Hollywood melodrama than serious live performance.

In the Waikato, there is a dearth of drama which cuts as deeply as R.U.R.

Perhaps tonight's performance signals the beginning of a movement to employ drama to put today's cowbale politics and its discouragement of serious questions and debate into perspective.

On an elegantly practical minimalist stage, the cast, after a somewhat pedantic beginning, produced stylish and challenging performances, allowing Capek's prophetic text to hit target after target.

The dynamic driver was ongoing tension between humanoid robots, what we would term cyborgs or androids, and their human creators.

The metaphor made for a wonderful mirror on today's science and economics and the spectre of so many developments, apparently made for the good of humanity, but becoming unstoppably destructive.

In parallel we were offered an unusually pithy and sympathetic description of humanity, nowhere more clearly seen than in the final minutes of the play and a wonderfully powerful performance by Clive Lamden as the last human left on Earth.

This performance of R.U.R. was challenging and satisfying at the same time, a real reminder of the value of first rate drama, and a superb response to the need for more theatre of this quality in the Waikato.