Danny Echo

So many of us who are bereaved yearn for one last touch, one last kiss, one last conversation, an opportunity to say goodbye. Danny Echo from Root & Branch Productions (Lawrence Batley Theatre) explores that possibility (or impossibility).
 
Danny Echo opened with a single figure seated absolutely still on a sofa – Danny (Christopher Deakin), or rather the AI replica created by controversial scientist Dr Meryl Kane (Lynne Whitaker) as part of a scientific study of AI robotics on grief. The replica gives Rachel (Lucy Hilton-Jones), Danny’s young widow, the option to have Danny back in a limited form – he can only repeat the words and actions from one day. And so, Rachel chooses to relive the day he died in a freak accident in a snowstorm.
 
Rachel is deeply uncomfortable with the robot ‘Danny’ at first, but over a period of a few weeks, Rachel uses an app to control the recording of the last day as if it’s a video recording, with Danny echoing his actions and words in an eerily pitch-perfect repetition from Deakin. We learn more about the couple, as Rachel becomes increasingly dependent on the Danny replicant, and her brother Tom (Joe Geddes) tries to keep her rooted in reality.
 
Danny’s lines are cleverly written to give us just one side of the conversation. Finally, we hear both sides of the last argument, understand what happened on that last day, and see Rachel’s realisation that nothing can change.
 
It got so many aspects of grief right – the numbness and lack of reality on the day they die and the impulsive decisions we can make at that time, the not wanting to be with people who are celebrating their smug joy of being part of a couple when your ‘coupleness’ has suddenly been ripped apart, the deep and desperate desire to feel the touch of your person, the almost overwhelming desire to make right the things that you said wrong, and the awful feeling of not having said ‘I love you’ the last time you spoke. It explores that we do need to let go in certain ways (though not forget) to be able to move forward.
 
The only thing that didn’t sit right with me (and that’s likely to be because I am a medical writer and have studied the role of science in drama) is that the script didn’t make clear any scientific justification for the study in the play, or what the data was supposed to show. I think this quibble is just one for me.
 
It was an interesting watch, and not necessarily one I could have seen early in grief, but I’m glad I saw it.