The Principle of Motion
Smirnoff Underbelly, Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Group: Activated Image

Dolan Cummings

Having pooh-poohed the magic tricks of a French court entertainer, a brilliant engineer in the service of the Austro-Hungarian court finds himself recast as a designer of elaborate toys.

The Principle of Motion was inspired by the book The Mechanical Turk, by Tom Standage, about the true story of Wolfgang von Kempelen and his celebrated contraption. Activated Image's production has a suitably playful and energetic feel about it, with neat ensemble acting conjuring a host of characters, and the set itself resembling a giant toy box.

Rising to the challenge set for him by Empress Marie-Therese, Von Kempelen takes it upon himself to create a chess-playing automaton. After six months he duly comes up with what seems to be the genuine article, known because of its turban as The Turk. It is impressive enough that The Turk is able to move pieces on a chess board, but more that than, it plays well, beating all comers. Can it be that this machine really thinks? Nobody can come up with an alternative explanation.

This story is intercut with that of Alan Turing, regarded as the father of modern computing, working on code-cracking during the Second World War. Turing is famous for his tests to distinguish between computers and human beings. The inability of the best minds of 18th century Europe to master such a distinction is a fascinating aspect of the story, as is Turing's own fascination with The Turk.

The Principle of Motion makes clever use of tangents in the story to illustrate the peculiar quality of human intelligence, forcing the audience to reflect that while computer logic is a product of the human mind, it is not how the human mind itself works.

Appropriately, the production is very physical, very human, if that doesn't sound too strange. John Sheerman is particularly impressive as Turing, making the most of the character's Asberger's Syndrome to complement the play's theme, without descending into clownery. Based on a story that threatened to appeal only to maths nerds, The Principle of Motion is a gratifyingly life-affirming theatrical experience.

31 July to 24 August.

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