When Emme Hoy’s Extinction of the Learned Response opens, it’s difficult to know exactly what’s happening. The play, which is having its premiere as part of Belvoir’s 25A indie season, begins in a sterile, clinical dining room where four people are having tea. Two of the characters, Marlow (Jennifer Rani) and Duncan (Tel Benjamin), are clearly in control, and are trying to teach the other two, Rachel (Sarah Meacham) and Wells (Eddie Orton), simple tasks while measuring their success. It’s an artificial environment, and a sinister air hangs over every interaction.
What becomes clear as Rachel and Wells are taught and quizzed on the patterns of polite small talk and simple physical behaviours, is that they’re the subjects of a bizarre experiment being undertaken by scientists Marlow and Duncan. The scientists are trying to teach their subjects how to be human in a controlled environment, but not everything goes to plan.
Hoy has written an ambitious sci-fi thriller that has the requisite theatricality to always feel compelling and unsettling. Under director Carissa Licciardello, the actors all bring clarity to their roles, but Hoy leaves her audience in the dark for a little too much of the running time (sometimes literally, with lighting designer Kelsey Lee’s effectively disorientating blackouts) for the play to have the emotional impact that it might.
It’s difficult to invest in the evolving relationships between the four characters when we’re not entirely sure what’s motivating any of them. It seems Marlow should be the heart of the piece – as the scientist who seems to have it all together but comes to learn that the rigid lines she’s drawn in her emotional life can no longer stand – but there’s a distance between the audience and Marlow that’s even greater than the one she keeps between herself and her partner, Duncan.
Rani is particularly good as Marlow – although she is the most obviously human of the characters – while Meacham and Orton both bring plenty of terror to the stage as two characters completely unsure of their place in the world or how their futures will unfold. Benjamin is appropriately creepy as Duncan, the real monster of the piece.
Hoy’s writing is reminiscent of two leading Lucys of British theatre – there’s a touch of Lucy Kirkwood in the structure and a touch of Lucy Prebble in the storytelling – and the scenario feels like it could be something out of Black Mirror. But it’s an original work in the way that it unfolds, and Licciardello keeps a firm grasp on the play through to its surprising conclusion.