Łukasz Twarkowski: The Employees at Southbank Centre

With sensual overstimulation, clever technical finesse and repetition to imitate the existential dread the characters experience, Łukasz Twarkowski’s The Employees is an ambitious project that, despite many solid ideas and interesting aesthetics, fails to deliver any deeper insight into what makes us human and often outstays its welcome with endlessly lingering shots and a generally ambiguous approach to storytelling.

The play adapts Olga Ravn’s 2020 novel, although it has little in common with the original beyond the premise: the crew of the 6000 spaceship (consisting of six human and six humanoid androids) are orbiting the planet New Discovered; during occasional landings, mysterious objects have been retrieved for study. These objects (not dissimilar from Kubrick’s monolith in their enigmatic nature) cause the crew to develop a desire to return to Earth and increase the humanoids’ apparent humanity.

While this fascinating setup ought to provide plenty of room to explore the implications, the production does little to go into detail. Questions of humanity remain surface level (it boils down to them displaying emotion, therefore their humanity is inferred), and there isn’t much of a plot to speak of beyond a number of scenes in which the androids and humans interact in increasingly odd ways.

Fabien Lédé’s set features a cubicle that represents the spaceship; the plot takes place within the cubicle, which is then transmitted to screen via cameramen who follow the actors around the cubicle. The audience is invited to observe the cubicle from all angles, which offers some interesting perspectives depending on how close or far from the action one is, but it’s a gimmick that after a while only few utilise. The technology itself is masterfully executed with shots that follow individual actors throughout the entire cube, but using video on stage is hardly innovative in 2025, and it’s a pity that for all the great technology they couldn’t get someone to proofread the English subtitles of spoken Polish in the performance.

Worse still, Twarkowski is often obsessed with particular shots: the actors following one of the cameramen in a close-up as they walk with a gloomy gaze through the spaceship is repeated endlessly, padding the runtime of a show that contains a short plot with little dialogue to two and half hours. It’s a shame, really: the premise is good, the technology is there, but too many bad decisions run the production into the ground.

Michael Higgs
Photos: Natalia Kabanow

Łukasz Twarkowski: The Employees is at Southbank Centre from 16^th until 19^th January 2025. For further information or to book visit the theatre’s website here.