Will Adamsdale: AI, AI, Oh... (Or How I Wrote a Hit Sitcom with ChatGPT But We're Not Talking Now) comedy review – An entertaining tale
The former Perrier winner battles with AI and, at times, himself
It is 22 years since Will Adamsdale won the Perrier Award (now the Edinburgh Comedy Award) but the subject of his new show, the temptations and risks of AI, couldn’t be timelier. The story starts at the tailend of lockdown, when Adamsdale and his family fled London for Devon, with the warnings of friends and his agent that he’d never work again still ringing in his ears. The comedian set about joining a group at the local school called ‘No iPhones For Under 16s’, staging a one-man kitchen protest against AI use in TV writing and resurrecting his long-cherished project of writing a novel about chess master Garry Kasparov’s battle against the Deep Blue computer.
Then, in an attempt to prove to his children that he wasn’t a complete technophobe, Adamsdale made tentative overtures to Chat GPT and was soon conversing long into the night, the transcripts of which formed the basis of a promising sitcom about, you guessed it, a (ro)bromance between a man and his AI pal.
Adamsdale is a self-described ‘showbiz jack of all trades’, a storyteller rather than a straight stand-up, who appears most at home when accompanying himself on the guitar in a series of musical pastiches. He is less at ease when separated from his instrument, with a nervy breathless delivery that occasionally causes him to meander and stumble over his words. Though the performance needs some tweaking and tightening, the meat of Adamsdale’s tale, about the folly of trusting and throwing your lot in with an AI companion, is highly entertaining.
Will Adamsdale: AI, AI, Oh... (Or How I Wrote a Hit Sitcom with ChatGPT But We're Not Talking Now), Underbelly George Square, until 29 August, 1.45pm.