This hugely enjoyable tech satire-slash-thriller from US playwright Aaron Loeb is so good at bamboozling you as to what it’s going to be about that I almost hesitate to get into the plot. It’s good! Go see it! Isn’t that enough of a review for you?
Okay, there isn’t a massive rug-pulling twist in ROI. But there is some fun misdirection in what initially looks set to be a satire on ethical investment funds. Sassy but idealistic May (Millicent Wong) is the protege – or in his words, ‘work daughter’ – of Paul (Lloyd Owen), the seen-it-all boss of ethical investors the Montrose Fund. One day, she stumbles across a unicorn: Willa (Letty Thomas) is a nervy, spectrum-y doctor with zero people skills who wants an insane $30bn investment in her ideas. But what she’s proposing intrigues May: advanced gene therapy that could change the world by eliminating most genetic conditions (eg cancer, Alzheimer’s). Willa contends that big pharma has suppressed such technology because it would tank their profits. May persuades Paul to take the plunge.
The whole play is pointing towards ethical venture capitalist May discovering that she’s more capitalist than ethical. But in fact she proves to be a spirited, unbending heroine, winningly played by Wong. Really ROI is about two things: the inevitably of technological change, and how ill-equipped flawed human beings are to be its avatars.
Loeb is clearly interested in tech and what the near future might look like. It’s not po-facedly THIS WILL HAPPEN, but the writing is fluid and confident on the subject of how our lives might change very drastically very soon, while pointedly avoiding getting too hung up on pontification or moralising. There are concerns raised about the technology, but as Willa points out, it’s going to happen eventually anyway.
The moral problems lie with the people in charge. ROI is not exactly about tech bros (nobody in it fits that description). But it is very much about how being the CEO of a colossally hyped, enormously valuable company with world-changing potential can totally twist the mind of somebody who might have been a little unusual but basically alright otherwise. The strength of the writing lies less in doomsaying than a relatively empathetic pointing out of how corrosive the mad deification our society heaps on tech visionaries can be.
Chelsea Walker is one of the most entertaining young directors out there and her slick, pacy production goes down very enjoyably indeed. Hampstead Downstairs shows tend not to be awash with budget but Rosie Elnile’s panelled set has a fun flexibility to it that sees the cast clamber over and around it during scene changes. And it’s enjoyably acted: Wong’s sarcastic idealist is the focus, but Thomas does some great, nuanced work as Willa, a woman so emotionally ill suited to success that it’s impossible to predict what she’ll do next.
It’s not perfect, but even the slightly swing-and-a-miss final scene has a chutzpah to it that means things hardly end on a bum note. ROI isn’t a self-seriously visionary tech drama, but it’s confident and clever and behind all the brio, genuinely very thoughtful.
