An insecure AI generator apologising repeatedly for not getting the text right in an adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies is a brilliant setup for what could have been a rollicking piece of theatre. Unfortunately, the fact that the source material is Romeo and Juliet is where the wheels fall off in this performance.

The premise of RoboWrite! The AI Playwright is sound. Give a text to an AI generator (in this case, Google’s Gemini – which, ironically, used to be called Bard!) and ask it to spit out a one-hour script. This performance is the only version in the season that uses a script as the primary reference – the other offerings on subsequent nights include Pride and Prejudice and Oliver Twist. These will probably work better because they are not already plays written in Shakespearean English.

This was the major issue for me. Poor Gemini struggled with straying too far from the language. The text is the text. So even though there were tricky stage directions and plot holes you could drive a semi through, it wasn’t enough of a departure to sustain the evening.

Yes, there were laughs. Yes, the players (all of whom were plucked from other Fringe shows) were clearly enjoying themselves. Yes, Pre-Game Theatre, who produced the show, has clearly put in the work to coax a story out of this. But I found myself more interested in the mechanics of how a ‘young generative AI’ was just as overwhelmed as most of us were when we read our first Shakespeare play in Year 11. That was funny.

I would encourage anyone with a love of literature and a hankering for the absurd to give this experience a go – just don’t do it with Shakespeare. Where does an inexperienced AI go to learn about and emulate Shakespeare? Straight to the source.

I put this through an AI generator myself and prompted it to write a candid review. I have included the title it suggested for this review.