It is incredibly difficult to review something as unique as Forced Entertainment’s new offering Signal to Noise. How do we quantify something that at its very core defies normal conventions to presents something unique.

Celebrating ‘40 years of tearing up the rulebook’ the inimitable company bring their new work to the Queen Elizabeth Hall on the Southbank for just two nights. What we are presented with is a purposeful cacophony, a bombastic assault to the senses directed by Tim Etchells.

We see the six frenzied performers lip-sync with AI recorded text, repeating often mundane phrases whilst the stage gradually gets more and more intensely decorated and altered with a variety of props and costume, including pot plants, chairs and a ladder. Every performance feels nuanced. We see lost individuals, trying to find themselves, questioning their reality when drawing on the world around them. A cornucopia of costume is used to desperately try find identities and yet we feel sorry for the souls in front of us who never manage to find themselves.

The whole piece feels discordant. We see these clearly talented, visceral performers combat, embody and embrace the relentless AI voiceover. At the beginning this is almost humorous but quickly gets frustrating. Snippets of quasi-humanity seem to appear and we connect momentarily with a particular instant or story before a carpet is (sometimes literally) removed from underneath and a reminder of the artifice of the spectacle is revealed. You look and cling onto any moment resembling sense or reason.

There is comedy here to find; mostly provided by Seke Chimutengwende channelling talk show hosts and Richard Lowden clowning carrying as much as he possibly can but apart from the few scattered much needed moments of absurdist levity the take-home image for me was seeing one of the actors silent screaming in frustration over the repeating AI soundscape. Her anger with the never-quite human resounding throughout the auditorium.

Running at just over 90 minutes the show does begin to outstay its welcome and from a sheer standpoint of audience stamina could do with being a little less. This is difficult to observe though as the discomfort we feel as an audience is integral to the subsequent experience and relief when leaving the theatre of returning to a world filled with actual interaction.

The sound and lighting design (Tim Etchells and Nigel Edwards) adds to the delirium, with pulsing stark lights and soundscape that feel oppressive and on the verge of beauty.

Part of the issue with this offering is the effect hits you after leaving the theatre. This is a show that revels in the knowledge that what it leaves you feeling after is almost more important than the journey you experience in the spectating. I defy most people to actual enjoy their spectatorship of the 90 minutes onslaught to the senses but just because I do not think this is a work made to be enjoyed that does not mean it lacks worth. Finding the signal to noise ratio in the piece is almost intentionally difficult. Trying to sift through what is merely background noise and what the actual transmitted effect of the piece is forces the audience to think and evaluate.

We are left with a frustration and understanding of how AI may imitate us but will never match the human experience. Where is that line between human and artifice and why is it so frustrating when it doesn’t quite hit? Something is missing. Is the frustration worth the lesson? I would argue this is for the individual, not the critic, to decide.

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