Actor Michael Sabbaton has some impressive form portraying tortured male protagonists; his work to date enacting stories from HP Lovecraft more than prove this, and it’s something of a theme he has explored further in his newest one-man theatre show, The Turk. However, quite unlike Lovecraft, in this original piece of work Sabbaton has allowed himself to engender pathos for his character, Maelzel. There are even a few moments of levity, as he reflects on some of the most curious moments in a long career. The overarching effect is of a well-rounded tragic figure, with an unusual and engaging story which forges links to genuine history along the way.
On what will no doubt be his final voyage, the showman Johann Maelzel has holed up in a cabin with his scanty belongings and a surfeit of bottles of wine. His only companion – if such it can be called – is the head of the ‘Turk’, a chess-playing automaton which he came by some years before and which has helped to make his name in the salons of Europe. Originally made in the 18th century, ‘the Turk’ has long amazed audiences with its eerie abilities, beating the great and the good at the game and even voicing ‘échec’ (‘check’) after making a move. This idea is, strangely enough, rooted in truth: there was a real vogue for automata in the 18th century (and even earlier) as people’s understandings of life processes grew and the old mysteries of the divide between body and soul were thrown into new crisis by this additional understanding of physicality. People experimented with building these ‘thinking machines’, items which did indeed draw crowds. Nascent science always feels a lot closer to mysticism than to the dispassionate science we know today, and that’s borne out in the play, operating as it does as a kind of Gothic sci-fi. The ‘digesting duck’ mentioned in the performance was real, too; truth is usually stranger than fiction…
However, in the case of the Turk, all the renown has long come at a cost, drowning out the other achievements of its original maker at a great personal cost to him, and since coming into the possession of Maelzel, it has consumed him, too. Finally, in debt, drunk and bereft, Maelzel ruminates on his long relationship with the automaton, and what it has cost him. His own personal circumstances are revealed very gradually, in the usual masterly way Michael Sabbaton has with pace, and Maelzel is a fascinating character, very strongly delineated and utterly plausible, with the showman’s flair for words and gestures rendered down into what very much feels like his final act. He’s tragicomic through and through, which again, works very well, providing us with a man who is well aware of his shortcomings and of the sheer ridiculousness of elements of his life, as well as absorbed by his own sadness. This is a cleverly-written play, meticulously constructed and grounded.
And interestingly, given that the play interrogates the ideas of sentience and existence, I found my eye continually drawn to the head of the Turk during the performance; there just is something hardwired into us whereby we attribute personality and purpose to objects, if they are shaped in such a way that they look human, or can respond in a humane way. I can only imagine the trials and tribulations to come, as artificial intelligence continues to make great leaps. And in the play, the Turk seems to take on significance as a character in its (his?) own right, too, despite being silent and (mostly) inanimate. This only adds veritas to what Maelzel is going through, as he half-asks himself, and half-asks the Turk daunting questions about the meaning of life. Where is the soul? What is thought?
The Turk manages to sustain many things at once, and as ever it’s testament to the skill of the writer and performer that this works so effectively. Combining existentialism and personal tragedy with strands of comedy, history, self-parody and even music (definitely marking a break with the Lovecraft!) I was fully immersed by this. It’s always a pleasure to see ambition succeeding in practice, and this is a highly original and engaging piece of work.
The Turk appears at the Sheffield University Drama Studio on March 28th 2019. For any further news and performances, visit michaelsabbaton.com