Comic Potential (play)

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Comic Potential by Alan Ayckbourn is a romantic sci-fi comedy. It is set in a TV studio in the foreseeable future, when low-cost androids have largely replaced actors.

Idealistic young writer Adam Trainsmith meets Chandler Tate, a former director of classic comedies, who makes a living by directing a never-ending soap opera. The leading-role android makes a series of mistakes. Supporting role android JC-F31-333, spots his lapses and laughs.

Later on, while Adam is watching old slapstick comedy, JC-F31-333 laughs again. She is afraid that the sense of humor is a production fault. Adam sees it as an advantage. He nicknames his favorite android Jacie and persuades Chandler that they should make a comedy for her.

Regional TV director Carla Pepperbloom threatens to ruin the project. She is jealous of Adam's sympathy for talented Jacie and orders the android's memory wiped. Adam panics and decides to kidnap Jacie. While on the escape, Adam and Jacie fall in love.

Comic Potential is Ayckbourn's fifty-third full-length play. It was first performed at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough in 1998 and received its West End premiere at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue in October 1999. Chandler Tate was played by David Soul, Jacie by Janie Dee. Janie's performance won her the Best Actress category of the London Critics' Circle Theatre Awards (1999), the Evening Standard Awards (1999) and the Laurence Olivier Awards (2000). (She had also created the role in Scarborough).

The play is about the ability to laugh and the ability to fall in love. They are both illogical and therefore differentiate humans from androids. The comedy also explores the Pygmalion syndrome and competing desires for autonomy and certainty.

The play was seen in 2008 in New Jersey at the Union County Arts Center, courtesy of the Alliance Repertory Theater Company. The presentation received many positive reviews, especially of the performance of Sara Peters as Jacie. ^[1]