创作关于当代社会“迷恋”（即某些普遍存在的社会现象或行为）的戏剧往往极具挑战性，因为这些现象在戏剧上演之前可能会发生变化或演变。一个聪明的解决办法是将故事背景设定在那些“迷恋”现象最初出现的时代，这样就能在相对稳定的历史框架内创作出具有共鸣的戏剧作品。澳大利亚剧作家汤姆·霍洛威（Tom Holloway）为墨尔本剧院（MTC）创作的新剧《Eliza》就采用了这一手法，该剧聚焦于德裔美国计算机科学家约瑟夫·魏岑鲍姆（Joseph Weizenbaum）与人工智能技术的早期发展。
t can be fiendishly difficult to write plays about contemporary obsessions, not least because they can shift and mutate in the time it takes to mount a production. A clever solution is to set your work at the point in history where said obsession began; that way you can still create resonant theatre within more stable boundaries. Eliza, Australian playwright Tom Holloway’s new play for MTC, cleaves to this formula, focusing on the German-American computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum and the firstlings of AI.
1966年，魏岑鲍姆在麻省理工学院（MIT）与同事罗恩（Ron，由哈米什·迈克尔饰演）及秘书贝基（Becky，由玛纳利·达塔尔饰演）共同工作时，发明了一种编程语言，这种语言可以被视作人工智能技术的诞生标志。然而，魏岑鲍姆本人却认为这种语言并不能真正代表人工智能的诞生。他设计的这个程序能够模仿心理分析的过程：重复某些语句，并提出诸如“你对此有何感受？”之类的开放式问题。他的目的是为了反驳艾伦·图灵（Alan Turing）提出的“机器终有一天能够学会思考”的理论。
Weizenbaum (Dan Spielman) is working at MIT in 1966 with colleague Ron (Hamish Michael) and secretary Becky (Manali Datar) when he comes up with a programming language that arguably represents the birth of artificial intelligence – although he’d be the first person to argue it doesn’t. Weizenbaum creates a program that mimics the language and tone of psychoanalysis, parroting phrases and asking open-ended questions of the “how do you feel about that?” variety. In this way, he aims to debunk Alan Turing’s theory that machines may one day learn to think.
令他震惊的是，他的同事和上级们并没有将这一理论性的成就视为值得庆祝的成果，反而对这个程序产生了浓厚的兴趣——这个程序被命名为“Eliza”，取自乔治·伯纳德·肖（George Bernard Shaw）戏剧《皮格马利翁》（Pygmalion）中的女主角。贝基对Eliza尤为着迷；不过，这可能仅仅是因为在20世纪60年代那个性别歧视严重的计算机科学领域里，她终于感受到了被人倾听的尊重。
To his immediate horror, he finds that rather than help celebrate a minor theoretical victory, his colleagues and superiors become enraptured by the idea that this program – dubbed Eliza after the protagonist of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion – understands them and responds in meaningful ways to their needs. Becky, in particular, seems very taken with Eliza, although it could just be that she feels listened to, rare in the chauvinist working environment of 1960s computing science.
一段时间里，《伊莱扎》以自然主义的手法处理其核心设定；看起来这出戏似乎会走向安娜·齐格勒的《51号照片》那种路数——那部剧讲的是罗莎琳德·富兰克林与DNA的发现；基调深思熟虑、冥想沉静。但霍洛威心中构想的是完全不同的另一出戏。很快，刺耳而离经叛道的音符被引入，人物开始表现得古怪起来——尤其是魏岑鲍姆本人，他试图把一只时钟藏在夹克里，最终竟吐出鸟羽。
For a while, Eliza deals naturalistically with its conceit; it seems the play might go the way of Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51 about Rosalind Franklin and the discovery of DNA; thoughtful and meditative. But Holloway has a different show entirely in mind. Soon, jarring and offbeat notes are introduced, and characters start to behave strangely – especially Weizenbaum himself, who tries to hide a clock in his jacket and is eventually spitting out birds’ feathers.
一个关键的艺术灵感来源（至少体现在制作上，或许也体现在剧作本身）似乎是奥森·威尔斯改编卡夫卡的《审判》。两位主人公拥有相同的名字。戴尔·弗格森的舞台美术，那仿佛无尽排列的白色档案箱和旋转的机械齿轮，唤起了约瑟夫·K工作环境中那令人发疯的囚笼感。保罗·杰克逊那诡异的、无菌般的灯光，嗡嗡作响地笼罩着表演空间，直接模仿了电影中的场景。
A key artistic inspiration (at least behind the production and possibly behind the play) seems to be Orson Welles’ adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial Both protagonists share the same first name. Dale Ferguson’s set, with its seemingly endless rows of white file boxes and spinning wheels of machinery, evokes the maddening prison of Josef K’s work environment. And Paul Jackson’s eerily antiseptic lighting, buzzing over the playing space, directly mimics scenes from the film.
霍洛威用超现实主义手法处理素材，有其益处：它让观众不安，使我们置身于“模仿游戏”之中，而非站在拥有优越知识的制高点上俯视人物；它也凸显了我们对现实最深层的恐惧，以及现实极易被伪造的脆弱性。但这同时也疏远了我们与这些人的共性：他们沦为符号，随着叙事开始呈现出熟悉的心理恐怖轮廓，他们变得不再有趣。
Holloway’s surrealistic approach to the material has some benefits: it unsettles the audience, keeping us behind the imitation game rather than looking down on the characters from a position of superior knowledge; and it underlines our greatest fears about reality and its susceptibility to be faked. But it also distances us from the humanity of these people: they become cyphers and, as the narrative starts to take on the familiar contours of psychological horror, they become less interesting.
佩奇·拉特雷执导精准且充满激情，全然拥抱剧作夸张的戏剧性与基调跳跃，带来一份令人愉悦的趣味感。这让剧目节奏紧凑有力，却也规避了真实的情感。三位演员表现出色，由斯皮尔曼领衔饰演越发震惊困惑的魏岑鲍姆，一个具有道德分量的维克多·弗兰肯斯坦。迈克尔一人分饰多角，个个口音比一个更滑稽离谱，妙趣横生；达塔则完美诠释了贝基，即便在安慰他人时也锋芒毕露，能瞬间转换情绪。她在剧末化身治疗师的转变更是一大惊喜。
Paige Rattray directs with precision and gusto, leaning into the play’s exaggerated theatrics and tonal leaps with a welcome sense of fun. This helps the play move at a cracking pace, but it also skirts any real emotion. The three actors are excellent, led by Spielman as the increasingly appalled and bewildered Weizenbaum, a Victor Frankenstein with moral stature. Michael is a riot as several characters, each with a funnier and more outrageous accent, and Datar is pitch-perfect as Becky, sharp even in consolation, able to turn on a dime. Her transformation into a therapist late in the show is an extra delight.
霍洛威是一位直觉敏锐且野心勃勃的剧作家——尽管他不掩对前辈的致敬，从齐格勒到哈罗德·品特再到卡里尔·丘吉尔——《伊莱扎》是一次高尚且常常令人捧腹的尝试，试图角力当代主要痴迷之一。它毫不含糊地指出了人工智能辩论核心的内在谎言：问题不在于机器会像我们一样思考（它们做不到），而在于我们会相信它们会。而这足以毁灭我们。
Holloway is an intuitive and ambitious playwright – even if he wears his influences on his sleeve, from Ziegler to Harold Pinter and Caryl Churchill – and Eliza is a noble and often very funny attempt to wrestle with one of the major preoccupations of our time. It makes an unambiguous point about the intrinsic lie at the centre of the AI debate: the issue isn’t that machines will think like us (they can’t), but that we’ll believe they do. And that will be enough to ruin us.
该剧运用极具成效的戏剧语言（剧场嗡嗡作响，宛如数据中心）来强调人工智能的光鲜亮丽，但我不禁怀疑这是否是正途。一部将我们带回人工智能起源时刻的剧作——彼时人类正与普罗米修斯式的理念与道德后果搏斗——本应比这更具人性。
The production utilises a highly effective theatrical language (the theatre buzzes like a datacentre) to emphasise the slickness and shine of artificial intelligence, but I wonder if this was the right way to go. A play that sends us back to AI’s genesis moment – when humans grappled with Promethean ideas and moral consequences – should feel more human than this.