★★★★★
AI, tech giants and online dating clash and combine in David Head’s wonderfully inventive sci-fi anthology. Here’s our Distant Memories of the Near Future review.
From the poster for David Head’s show, Distant Memories of the Near Future, it’s hard to know what to expect. Alone, holding an astronaut’s helmet and wearing a purple jumpsuit, give it a different title and it could easily serve as a quirky advertisement for his hit new stand-up show.
Instead, Distant Memories of the Near Future is a one-man play that feels utterly unique at the Edinburgh Fringe – and not in the classic “watch a man put a microphone where he shouldn’t” kind of way.
💜👩🏼🚀ED FRINGE NEWS 🚀💜 And with a month to go, official poster reveal! Distant Memories of the Near Future, @Summerhallery directed by @killeenmesoftly and written/performed by me. A storytelling show about technology, love and what it means to be human @edfringe #edfringe pic.twitter.com/piaj8TL3Op
— David Head (@DavidNHead) July 1, 2023
Made up of five distinct stories from, appropriately, the near future, Distant Memories unfolds like a big-hearted, incredibly smart episode of Black Mirror. From the tech billionaire inventing an infallible dating app to the astronaut with her boot stuck in a space rock, each segment takes the audience on a journey from bleak, technophobic nihilism to pure emotional ecstasy.
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The balance here between fear of the future and faith in humanity is struck perfectly. Slickly designed television adverts from “The Government Department for Productivity and Amazon” (“Sell your data – we’ll only steal it anyway”) add a wonderfully wry sense of humour to the proceedings.
All the while, a deftly-applied soundscape provides the perfect backing to Head’s engrossing storytelling. When a projector suddenly paints the Summerhall’s lecture-theatre setting with a gentle star-scape, it would take a stone-cold heart not to find the experience incredibly moving.
The Fringe this year is chock-full of shows about the rise of AI. None of them, I suspect, even come close to this one. A singular vision of terrifyingly universal paranoia stuffed full of emotional catharsis, the result is a properly unique, underseen gem and an impeccable lesson in storytelling. Distant Memories of the Near Future is exactly what the Fringe was made for. Go, go, go.
Distant Memories of the Near Future is playing at the Summerhall – Red Lecture Theatre at 17:45 until 27 August.
