Are they not men? The members of the onstage combo in Ethan Lipton’s new show are, in fact, robots, despite looking like middle-aged male representatives of the human species. They may play tunes for the benefit of the audience members, but their main purpose, Lipton informs us, is to find out “what you want from your machines, so we can make your lives better.” (Lipton narrates the show and performs lead vocals.) The purpose of the evening, it appears, is for these sophisticated high-tech creatures in gray suits to undergo deep learning.
And as the title “We Are Your Robots” implies, our humble servants are respectful of boundaries. “I know, for example, that it is illegal for a robot to tell a human being what to do with their own body,” Lipton says. “Because only other humans are allowed to do that.”
That line is sneakily effective because Lipton’s wry delivery and hangdog mien have a way of softening blows and prompting double takes. The agreeable, light-on-their feet songs, have a similar effect, lulling us into the kind of complacent comfort that tech companies gamble on. But taken as a whole, the show, which is directed by Leigh Silverman, feels stifled by slightly monotonous whimsy.
Produced by Theater for a New Audience and Rattlestick Theater, “We Are Your Robots,” which just opened at Polonsky Shakespeare Center, is described as a musical. But it is closer to a loosely articulated song cycle that feels like a souped-up evening at Joe’s Pub.
Over the past couple of decades, Lipton has carved an idiosyncratic niche of one in the New York theatrical ecosystem with such shows as “No Place to Go” and “The Outer Space.” He is at his best with a firmer narrative structure, as in the zany western “Tumacho,” which had the tough luck of reopening in March 2020 after a short earlier run.
“We Are Your Robots,” on the other hand, is held together not so much by its theme as by its retrofuturist space-age aesthetic; a clean-cut art pop redolent of They Might Be Giants and David Byrne’s literate, faux-naïf sensibilities; and Lipton’s turn as a ham-on-wry narrator. (Lee Jellinek did the set, dominated by a stylized visual that recalls both a face and a cassette tape; Alejo Vietti conceived the costumes; Nevin Steinberg handled the sound design.)
Many of the rewards are handed out by the ace band, made up of Vito Dieterle (saxophone), Eben Levy (guitar) and Ian Riggs (bass). These longtime collaborators of Lipton’s wrote the music with him and are versatile, nimble instrumentalists. Levy’s solo on “I’m a Machine,” in particular, is a fabulous tremolo feast in the Dick Dale tradition.
The narrative is just as fleet in its own way, but ends up feeling disjointed as Lipton bounces breezily from tossed-off quips, including one about the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard, to digressions, either spoken or sung, that are connected to the purported subject by gossamer thread. “Vulfy,” a ditty about Mozart, is sung in a German accent (“Vulfy Motz / You were totes, now you’re toast”), while the melancholy “Where Are We Now” facetiously claims it is based on a 1970 album by humpback whales (which does exist, in case you were wondering).
Lipton borrows from a variety of sources for his musings on artificial intelligence and the role of robots in our lives, as if the throughline had been coughed up by clicking on random subjects picked by a polymath’s algorithm. At one point he helpfully informs us that YouTube “is where I get most of my top-shelf information.” That sounds human after all.
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