Actually, the notion of the unnerving in A Dead Body in Taos , a blend of disturbed family relations and spooky technological interventions, is fairly traditional – you might say, eternal.

Gemma Lawrence’s Sam makes sturdy work of a daughter that has not felt the love of a Mother for most of her life – but we don’t see her grapple with the emotional torment anywhere near enough. As Sam discovers her mother’s past and interacts with her bodiless form, she comes to terms with their relationship and unresolved conflict.As she spends more time with her virtual Mother it is fascinating to see them bond more closely than they ever had done in real life – I wanted to invest more time in exploring the possibilities of reconciliation and forgiveness. A Dead Body in Taos is very American; jokes fly around about New Jersey, Iowa and the West Coast, characters declare their religion as if audiences should immediately understand it reveals something new about that character.

To transform a genre that is commonly associated with cisgender masculinity into a queer extravaganza is no easy task. The synthetic voice is particularly unnerving as well, all to a heightened effect in the acoustic Wilton’s Music Hall. The character construction is therefore well executed, giving depth and relatability to them (either because we’ve been when they are, either because they might remind us of somebody we know) as well as some sort of evolution throughout the performance. David Farr’s unusual and inquiring play, directed by Rachel Bagshaw and produced by Fuel, becomes an existential mystery exploring what constitutes humanness and how we can be truly free.They are all questions that frustratingly never get answered or even given room for much discussion and thought. The play is one long monologue performed by Anouka, accompanied by composer Grace Savage who provides beats and synth. How you respond to David Farr’s drama about a former Sixties radical who cheats death by turning herself into a cyborg depends, to a large extent, on whether you are a fan of Adam Curtis, the man responsible for those relentlessly quirky documentaries about society and its ills (cue archive film of SS men playing backgammon to the sound of Doris Day’s Que Sera, Sera). The plot focuses on Sam (an enthusiastic Gemma Lawrence) who finds herself in Taos, a small town in New Mexico.

David Farr's compelling new play is both an unsettling science fiction and an intimate study of loss and bereavement, examining how artificial intelligence could alter our understanding of death, consciousness and the soul. Sam, played by Gemma Lawrence, has flown in from London to identify the body of her mother, Kath, from whom she has been estranged for three years. She’s not talking to a corpse, but a mechanical representation of her mother aged thirty-five, into which her mother’s memories, emotions and biographical data have been uploaded. Rather than intelligently and emotionally exploring the ethics or indeed the psychological effects of all this, Farr instead chooses to spend too much time in flashback to Kath’s beginnings.Farr’s story fascinatingly explores the reasons AI is feared while not getting too much into science fiction. Directing his own work (here in collaboration with Alice Hamilton), he sets up dance-like patterns between actors and seems to choreograph silences. Eve Ponsonby’s Kath seamlessly flits from her ardent past to the robotic present, and Clara Onyemere’s portrayal of Tristana Cortez – the humanely pragmatic supervisor at the Future Life Corporation – is one of the highlights of the evening. Kath has chosen an image of her younger self from 1986, the year that she gave birth to her daughter, with which Future Life have created a 3D model of her that lives within a starkly illuminated frame. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

But Farr’s masterstroke is to use these futuristic ideas to interrogate the past, through a strained mother-daughter relationship. There’s an ethereal, Don DeLillo quality to these opening minutes, setting a lethargic pace for the play to explore its Big Questions. I am equally drawn to Gemma Lawrence’s portrait of Sam and sympathise with all the emotions that come with discovering that your dead mother is not as dead as you thought. Sam hasn't spoken to her mother Kath for three years when she learns that she's been found dead in the New Mexico desert.Little does she know that she is in for a disturbing challenge as she boards a plane to New Mexico to sort her mother’s affairs. But as Peter Gill’s drama spools back and forward in time it conjures a neglected world, touches rare emotions, gains in consequence. David Farr’s exhilarating play pinpoints how a whole generation of boomers matured from ’70s radical protesters to wealth-hoarding individualists. If her daughter chooses to keep her mother ‘alive’, and not press the delete button, she would have to feed Kath’s emotional needs, presumably for the rest of her life.