Assembly Roxy
Aug 5-29, 2026
(16:40)
Every year at the Fringe, Assembly Roxy provides one of its more fascinating theatre spaces – an old church transform’d for performance, its sloping seats & wooden floor helping create just the right atmosphere for a play such as An Echo in the Void. I chose the show partly because of its alluring title, wondering exactly what kind of void we were about to encounter. It wasn’t quite what I expected, but it was very good.
Beginning with a deep dialogue between the four performers onstage – Americans & a Scot – the metaphorical pages began turning fast. From No Boundaries Theatre Company comes a thought-provoking play examining the new advent of global AI. We all have differing views about what this technology means for humanity, & An Echo in the Void finds plenty of ways to explore them.
Founded by artist Mark Giberson, the company are busy with various projects, including this strange journey into the void. There are mysteries everywhere, not least the repeated switching on & off of consciousness. The characters click between different perspectives & misunderstood memories, almost Freudian in their uncertainty. Anger & bewilderment frequently come to the fore, while reason & logic offer a helping hand – although very little is ever completely agreed upon.
Arthur Graff is a name often mentioned. Are we supposed to imagine he is dead, or is a programme rather lovingly call’d Sanctuary somehow responsible for everything? The characters question & inquire, but struggle to uncover reliable information or even grasp a proper sense of normality. Before long, their desire to save the world becomes something rather more immediate: a desperate need to escape the scenario they find themselves trapped within.
The void itself speaks, loudly & distortedly: “End the suffering.” Like detectives, the characters attempt to understand exactly what this means. Gradually, the possibility emerges that the suffering itself may have been created by a seemingly invisible machine.
Everything becomes task, interrogation & uncertainty. One explosive incident involves a military procedure which the characters had previously laugh’d about – the possibility of turning AI into a killing machine. Some kind of weapon strikes the group, apparently leaving two of them gone. Then, with the click of AI, they are back again – upright, revitalis’d & carrying on. It’s an unsettling demonstration of this absurdly powerful technology, capable of dividing life into pieces until the characters can no longer be certain of their connection with reality itself.
Yet they remain strong, in fact growing stronger as their determination to escape increases. The greater their awareness becomes, the greater their need to end this confusing elemental void which seems to be watching everything & taking notes.
Sanctuary is an interesting name for the process at the centre of all this, something deliver’d into the back of the head – or directly into the brain – capable of performing acts of support as easily as degradation. Questions lead to answers which themselves seem capable of changing from scene to scene. After all this leaping around between realities & dimensions, we begin asking ourselves whether there can possibly be a viable way back.
You cannot unlearn something once it has happen’d – that is an old human rule. Yet Sanctuary appears capable of doing exactly that, deleting the pain of mind, body & soul in the pursuit of making us happy. But some stubborn human instinct refuses to let go quite so easily. However much knowledge the technology promises us, something blurry, irrational & distinctly human remains.
And perhaps that is where the grace of An Echo in the Void ultimately lies. After all its questions, technologies, shifting realities & philosophical uncertainties, it leaves us in the hands of doubt. Nobody can be entirely certain what these things will mean for us, only that they seem to be arriving anyway.
What a strange & rather wonderful thing it remains to be human.
Daniel Donnelly
