Camden Fringe comedy review

Well, you can’t say the title didn’t warn you. Artificial Insmelligence is often puerile and dumb. But frequently stupidly funny too, and performed with zest by a cast with dependable comic instincts.

It’s set in deep space, aboard a sparsely occupied mining ship, with an incompetent, self-important captain, a cleaning droid and a computer with an attitude problem. So far, so Red Dwarf, but writer Louis Fonseca has put his own stamp on the premise.

His premise is that computers will evolve to become more intelligent and humans less so – but any dystopian sci-fi message is a very distant second compared to playing up the stupidity of the humans.

Fonseca, formerly of the Horse & Louis musical double-act, also plays the captain, Gerald, who wants to be called Jingo – but that would be against the programming of ship’s computer, Terry. These two are in a classic double-act relationship, with the almost childlike combination of enthusiasm and incompetence of the human playing off the wisdom and sarcasm of the electronic straight man.

Abbie Murphy is the Lady-Butler 3000, coded to have a conscience. She starts as a Sartre-reading nihilist convinced of the futility of existence - which she makes hilarious in a Marvin The Paranoid Android sort of way - but gradually begins to warm to the idea. Ever-engaging, Murphy also gets to engage with the audience, adding extra playfulness and looseness to the show – while doubling up as Gerald’s mum, dropping by via holographic Zoom.

Will Hartley, of sketch group Clever Peter, is the epitome of Yorkshire plain-speaking as his dad, so disappointed in his beta-male son that he buys an artificial replacement in the buff android form of Alex Griffin-Griffiths, very much one of the lads. A brobot, in fact, whose exaggerating posturing is excellent fun.

The whole hour fizzes with high spirits. There are a few lulls while the increasingly preposterous plot is attended to, but the vibe is of a themed sketch show – and one of the more successful, fast-moving ones at that. 

With bold larger-than-life characters, silly running jokes, lively performances and a playful spirit of lo-fi mucking about, this is quite the tonic.

Review date: 9 Aug 2021
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Hen and Chickens