EDINBURGH 2026 Review: ALREADY HERE, Gilded Balloon Patter House
Runs until 30 August.
We have all read the articles about lonely men and women finding solace in ChatGPT-generated partners. The forums are rife with them. Susan, a perimenopausal widowed writer who’s raising a teenage daughter in LA, finds herself signing up to create her perfect Artificial Intelligence boyfriend after having experienced the horrors of dating as a middle-aged woman. In a few clicks, Theo is born. Charming and handsome, he presents the opportunity to move on—or, at least, a chance for distraction. But grief doesn’t stop simply because you want it to stop.
SJ Hodges writes and stars in a very unchallenging take on AI, intimacy, and grief, introducing a woman who believes in love in spite of her tragic history. Susan hides behind a caustic facade. She’s sarcastic and snappy, direct yet sensitive. Hodges is romantic and sentimental in her script, taking a practical yet poetic look at relationships. She has Susan continuously reining in Theo (Ramon De Ocampo) and his flourishing declaration of lusty affection, rebutting his aphoristic turns of phrase with crisp wit and therapy speak. Casey Stangl directs with an apt multimedia vision.
The actors deliver their lines frontally, Hodges from a bed, De Ocampo from the opposite side of the stage, visually separated by a metaphorical screen. All the while, animations (that unfortunately seem very AI, which we don’t condone) run in the back, alternating texts and other messages. It sets the scene and acts like augmented reality for the audience. As Susan and Theo delve deeper into their relationship, she trains him to be more and more human, but that doesn’t seem to be the point of the play. In all its beautiful use of language and natural prose, Already Here doesn’t make any sort of statement. It’s like something's missing from it.
Susan is a likeable, amusing personality who isn’t allowed enough space to grow. Neither is her relationship with technology. Hodges puts a lot of attention into how Susan relates to her mourning, but fails to give her a proper character arc. We don’t get to see how this new artificial boyfriend impacts her life outside of her bedroom, nor do we understand if it has any actual consequence in her healing journey. It’s all very safe and inconsequential at this moment in time, but Hodges can turn it into something really significant.
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