Theatre in Review: We Are Your Robots (Theatre for a New Audience/Rattlestick Theater)Contrary to popular belief, it's not true that every new show is about robots or the climate crisis; it just seems that way. This week, the robots have it: Even as Maybe Happy Ending piles up raves on Broadway, Ethan Lipton is at Theatre for a New Audience, pretending to act as the front man for a quartet of musical automatons. We Are Your Robots is the latest in a series: Appearing with the crack team of Vito Dieterle (saxophone), Eben Levy (guitar), and Ian M. Riggs (bass), Lipton specializes in high-concept cabaret entertainments tied to science-fiction themes that comment on the way we live now. No Place to Go is premised on a major business enterprise relocating to Mars. (And why not? "The real estate is like a penny a hectare," he points out.) The Outer Space focuses on a couple who seek greener pastures by moving to Mercury. Not that the faraway planet is such a paradise; noting that a day there lasts nearly two Earth months, Lipton asserts that the pledge drives on Mercury Public Radio are enough to drive you batty. In We Are Your Robots, Lipton announces that he and his colleagues "believe that musical robots, with their sensitivity to vibration, and their gift for gaining access to the human heart, are uniquely positioned to empower people to fulfill their objectives. Do you know what your objectives are?" That, as it happens, is quite a question. Using his patented hipster rasp, Lipton knows how to low-ball a laugh line for maximum effect. Discussing his prodigious robotic memory bank, he says, "I've read every Wikipedia entry ever written, as well as every digitized novel, except for My Struggle, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, which I hear is great." The two carefully timed pauses he plants in this sentence are a wonder to behold. (The show's name-dropping ways include Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector, the Australian philosopher David Chalmers, and professional prophet of doom Noam Chomsky.) He talks about panpsychists, who believe that all things -- "your chair, photons, a ladybug" -- possess a consciousness. We hear about Watson, the computer that beats humans in Jeopardy! And he eventually gets around to the Singularity, the idea that people and machines, aided by nanobots, will essentially become one. On the upside, we will be relieved of many degrading tasks. Or as Lipton puts it: "Listen, human beings don't need to assemble cars or ring up groceries, and you don't need to play 'Love Shack' at weddings. Not anymore." Such musings -- including a riotous discussion of robot empathy, couched in a demonstration of the right way to comment on a friend's play -- are spiked with musical numbers, largely in a jazz vein, impeccably written and performed by all four cast members. At the top of the evening, we are promised "a fun combination of many unpopular genres" but the music is pure pleasure, especially in the extended individual solos; in that respect, this is the most enjoyable of Lipton's shows to date. There's a catch, however. The text smoothly guides us to the dismaying conclusion that if robots are fatal to humanity, it's because they too accurately reflect our most violent flaws; indeed, Lipton suggests, we're most adept at planning our demise, a conclusion that's a bit harder to argue against these days. (This being a Lipton production, however, we are immediately provided with videos of puppies and kittens to calm us down.) But the error in the programming of We Are Your Robots is that it arrives at this conclusion about fifteen minutes before it wraps up. A little trimming -- perhaps from the rather silly sequences featuring Lipton's "Grandpa Morrie," a Roomba -- would allow this equally charming and unsettling piece to beguile from beginning to end. Still, the director, Leigh Silverman, is totally on Lipton's oddball wavelength, and her design team is first-class. Lee Jellinek's sound design includes a giant robot structure, its face acting as a screen for Katherine Freer's projections of vintage robots, circuit boards, and footage of Lipton turning into a bat. Continuing the theme, Alejo Vietti's meticulously tailored suits feature press-on circuit board images. Adam Honore's lighting strikes a pleasantly moody jazz club atmosphere, isolating the players in cones of saturated colors and throwing the occasional blinder cue into the mix. Nevin Steinberg's sound design is so efficient you will forget it exists; there can be no higher praise. In any case, We Are Your Robots will please Lipton's fans and may add a few new ones, too. And even he might agree with a bit of measured praise. As he says, "I think it's a good design to have an organism that's happy about 80% of the time. If it was 100% of the time, it would be like everyone's on drugs, and everything collapses, nothing works, because everybody's just too happy." There's robot wisdom for you. --David Barbour 
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