Beyond The Fence (Arts Theatre) / Computer Says Show (TV)

Computer says no! Beyond the fence is beyond the pale. Just a few predictions of what the critics might say, didn't need an algorithm to work that out either.

Saw it tonight and it's not good. From what I can figure out it is based on a scenario thrown up by a computer and then uses music written by a computer. The sad thing is the score and setting are the best things about it, where it falls down is the plot, characters, dialogue and lyrics - the human generated part. Which is a shame because I really loved the Gay Wedding musical that the creators made previously for TV.

What we have is a bunch of women, all thinly drawn tropes, protesting in Greenham common. All the stereotypes are there, comedy fat northerner, angry black lesbian, julie walters-esque spunky old lady, sex crazed welsh woman straight out of Gavin and Stacey and our protagonist, militant feminist (because she was damaged by a man and actually learns all she needs is a good man) and her daughter who doesn't speak (no prizes for guessing what she overcomes near the end).

spoilers ----

They mill about singing songs about their passion for ending nukes for most of the show without much in the way of action, they have an argument,the protagonist hates the leading man until during a song she concedes that she is in love with him of course, their angry leader has a bizarre death and the kid comes out and sings a really eloquent song with too many words in it, which is the point, but it's still hackneyed.

You don't need a computer to see that there is a formula for writing a musical like this, showstopper worked it out ages ago and they make it up on the spot with a less obvious A B rhyme scheme. The cast all do their best but it's tricky to overcome the dodgy lines where everyone says exactly what they're feeling and subtext is nowhere to be seen.

An interesting experiment but not a great show

Should've picked a 70s band, thrown a bunch of their songs together, and plucked out some nouns to use as character names. Job done. A calculator could handle that.

I'm not sure I see the purpose of this. Back when computers first became a thing it was assumed that tasks that were easy for humans would be easy for computers (which is why artificial intelligence has been "ten years away" for over half a century), but the whole power of computers is that they're really good at the things humans are really bad at. There's no point trying to make a computer creative because we have humans for that. The advantage of computers is that they're fast, they don't make mistakes, they don't get bored, and they don't give up. You use computers for all the mindless, repetitive tasks that are too tedious for a sapient creature to contemplate, such as calculation and data retrieval and monitoring and programming the advertising on daytime television.

I saw it yesterday and cried from the emotion of it. There are some flaws in the plot and writing but I thought it had a beautiful message and some catchy songs. I don't see why all the critics have been so negative towards it. I thought it was great and the actors were all amazing!