There’s a website out there that, amongst other things, reviews church services. All their reviews take a question-and-answer format. One of the questions reviewers must answer is, “What one thing will you remember about all this in seven days’ time?” If I were to answer that with regards to this production, it would have to be the moving lights at the start of each act, creating the atmosphere of a disco but without any disco or disco-esque music to accompany it. Later, during a moment of chaos in the story, when tech entrepreneur Callum’s (Charlie Renwick) plans and designs go into irretrievable meltdown, the stage lights were relatively static.
That wasn’t the only curious choice in a show which contained some beautiful harmonies between Ada Lovelace (Meg Abbott), Ethel Smyth (Ashleigh Cassidy) and Emmeline Pankhurst (Aishling Jones). But lush musical numbers don’t quite capture the fightback that these women, if the premise were accepted that they were somehow removed from their nineteenth century lives and imported into an AI framework in the near future (yes, really), would be reasonably expected to put up. Granted, the narrative arc is a welcome departure from aggressive feminism of the shouty and sweary kind. These women, or rather, these versions of them, were too compliant with Callum and his AI, unimaginatively called System. Having established they were being controlled by the same sort of external forces that restricted them back in their day, where were the hunger strikes, the loud protests, the breaking of windows?
The audience is, at least, introduced to the historical women figures – no prior knowledge of them, the suffrage movement that Smyth and Pankhurst were involved in, or the earlier life and times of Lovelace, is assumed. Callum as a character seems to be a nepo baby, and there is a major contradiction in him wanting to somehow rid the world of the influence of women and yet literally crying to his ‘mummy’ at the first sign of trouble. But why does women-hating Callum have women in his AI framework? Put simply, System has developed independent thought.
I was tipped off by someone who attended a preview and experienced sound problems with the production, such that not everything could be properly heard. On press night, the cast’s microphones had been turned right up, such that even footsteps and breathing could occasionally be heard, as well as microphone feedback (creating an unpleasant howling sound over the dialogue). Without giving too much away, good triumphs over evil in the end, though quite how it happens is both amusing and somewhat reductive, given that this was, I think, meant to be a musical showcasing the achievements of women rather than relying on their personal characteristics to see them through.
Then again, the show, whose costumes are suitably of the right period, not so much suggests as stipulates that logic isn’t everything. I’m not, therefore, quite sure what to take away from this production. Do we need to be concerned about the evil side of AI or not? The System supposedly having been roundly defeated, an eerie postscript provides a final twist. Well performed, and at ninety minutes including interval, not a minute longer than it needs to be, this was a story crying out for substantially more dramatic tension than it currently has.
Review by Chris Omaweng
What happens when a system designed to optimise the future decides what no longer belongs in it?
Flyology is a sharp, feral new musical about civilisation, control, and the things that refuse to be tidied away.
Ava Lovelace – Meg Abbott
Ethel Smyth – Ashleigh Cassidy
Emmeline Pankhurst – Aishling Jones
Callum – Charlie Renwick
Swing – Charlotte Webb
Book & Lyrics – Cathy Farmer
Music & Lyrics – Tamiko Dooley
Director – Craig McKenzie
Lighting Designer – Adam Gregory
Choreographer – Grace Browning
FLYOLOGY
Union Theatre
5 to 8 May 2026
