Comic Potential

A sci-fi comedy-thriller, Comic Potential is set in a TV studio in the near future, where a director—an alcoholic has-been—and his assistants are making a daytime soap opera of the usual appalling sort. The difference is that they are using actoids—robots programmed to act—and there are no scriptwriters. Into this situation comes the idealistic Adam, nephew of the millionaire station owner, who wants to write comedy of the quality that Chaplin and Keaton once embodied. But when Adam falls in love with Jaycee Triplethree (JC333), one of the actoids on the show, everything is turned upside down as she grows more human and the line between actoid and human narrows further. When Jaycee finally cries out in anguish that she can't say anything she hasn't been programmed to say, Adam points out that no one ever says anything original anyway.

Comic Potential is a comedy set in the foreseeable future when everything has changed except human nature.

Alan Ayckbourn's fifty-third full-length play was presented at the Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, in 1998 and received its West End premiere at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, in October 1999.