England’s comic master is in a black-comic mode in this West-End hit about our fascination with and enslavement by technology. It is sometime quite soon. The place is a fortified, steel-shuttered, slovenly flat in a no-go area of North London where punk thugs violently rule the deserted streets. Here, lonely composer Jerome sits surrounded by sophisticated, high-tech audio-visual equipment. His only company is a robot nanny, NAN 300F – and she’s somewhat on the blink. Jerome desperately wants to get his teenage daughter back and enlists the services of Zoë, an out-of-work actress, to implement a cunning plan he’s evolved to impress his estranged wife and a wired-for sound child welfare officer. When things don’t work out with Zoë, Jerome has to improvise . . . . . It’s amazing what can be done with some new micro chips and a screwdriver.
