Algorithms, written and performed by Sadie Clark, is a delightful one act solo piece that captivates the audience from start to finish.
Brooke (Sadie Clark) is a dating app code writer and hopeless romantic, who goes from having it all, to having it all go tits up just before her 30th birthday.
With her magnetic personality, Clark has the audience rejoicing and commiserating throughout all of Brooke’s trials and tribulations while navigating this hyper-connected present day, and the double-edged sword of online dating.
For all romantics, the thought of finding one’s soulmate through the impersonal combination of mathematics and technology feels soul-crushing and dehumanising. Hate it, but can’t live without it.
And so, the audience already deeply relates to Brooke’s journey to find love, in a world that reduces everyone to dietary preferences and a profile photo displaying cleavage.
The set’s economical design choices offers just enough to establish the tone of the piece. The backdrop is made of ceiling to floor gold streamer curtains. A winner’s podium sits in the middle of the stage that Brooke sometimes jumps onto, sits or sprawls out on. This is a simple device that also suggests an arbitrary sense of competition. After all, the protagonist is constantly aiming to be the best version of an unattainable standard in the hopes of pleasing others.
Together with director Madelaine Moore, Sadie Clark lets a combination of her winning persona and brilliant writing do most of the storytelling. Through a range of accents, she transitions effortlessly between her posh mother, unsympathetic boss, neglectful ex-girlfriend and other characters.
This is brilliantly supported by composer and sound designer Nicola T. Chang and lighting designer Jennifer Rose. Rose’s less-is-more approach provides subtle and recognisable effects to signify a change of time and place, from pulsating lights in a club to dimly lit bedrooms.
Chang cleverly underscores Brooke’s non-stop monologue with classic ringtones, clacking keys and whooshes the audience can easily identify of smartphones, enhancing the audio experience and emphasising the overly digitalised world Brooke is forced to engage with.
The jokes come one after the other, the storytelling filled with multiple throwaway lines and witty side quips. These tiny diversions to her various main points are coupled with side glances, and her direct address to the audience is pleasurably naturalistic, thus drawing them in easily.
Clark characterises Brooke as an easily relatable millennial who is deeply aware of her own flaws, and her attempts to do the right thing in a world that makes being true to oneself inherently challenging.
On top of that, Clark also includes lip syncs to pop songs such as Celine Dion’s ‘All By Myself’ and Natasha Bedingfield’s ‘Unwritten’. Despite being told by her ex-girlfriend and mother that singing out loud brings embarrassment to herself, she eventually busts out a cutesy karaoke machine and brings the entire performance to an exuberant finish.
With Clark onstage, the audience cannot help but root for the hilarious and hapless heroine, laughing at every other line in genuine appreciation for how relatable her misadventure seems to be.
Algorithms is full of heart and humour, and guarantees an enjoyable evening at the theatre and great music earworms that last long after the performance ends.
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