Rarely does one encounter a small‑scale theatre production so meticulously designed from its very first moment. In The Uncontainable Nausea of Alec Baldwin, a low foghorn‑like sound drifts through the auditorium as haze slowly fills the air. The stage floor is covered with a soft, cushion‑like surface, creating the uneasy sense that the audience might slowly sink into someone’s dream, or perhaps someone’s nightmare.
Writer and director Tommaso Giacomin has little interest in traditional theatrical realism. Instead, the show embraces a collage‑like structure more commonly associated with European experimental theatre: fragments of narrative, sudden shifts in style, and an ongoing questioning of what “reality” means in a world saturated by digital media.
The story centres on Alec (James Aldred), a man obsessively replaying an accident he insists was not his fault. Unable to confront the possibility that he may have committed an act of violence, Alec turns to an unlikely confidant: an AI chatbot, to whom he pours out fragments of confession, denial and speculation.
The premise may sound absurd, but it feels strangely familiar. In only a few years, AI has become a peculiar kind of listener, absorbing thoughts that might once have been shared with therapists or friends. The Uncontainable Nausea of Alec Baldwin captures this uneasy intimacy sharply, particularly when the chatbot attempts to reconstruct the mysterious accident.
Based on Alec’s prompts, the AI generates a series of hypothetical scenes, which the actors perform live. One version is flat and robotic. Another becomes exaggerated melodrama reminiscent of Greek tragedy. When Alec insists that “we were just friends”, the system promptly produced a cheerful sitcom scenario complete with canned laughter. Later, the reconstruction drifts into something resembling an Agatha Christie‑style murder mystery.
The joke lands well: AI can only reproduce the narrative templates it has absorbed from the internet. Human experience, with all its contradictions and ambiguities, becomes flattened into genre.
Yet the production gradually begins to mirror the very condition it seeks to interrogate. Scene after scene piles up fragments – news clips, social‑media language, stylised reconstructions, bursts of choreographed chaos. Individually they are inventive, but collectively they lack a clear centre of gravity. The result is a strangely restless atmosphere: lots of stimulation, but little sense of what ultimately grounds the work.
This fragmentation also affects the performances. Aldred provides a quietly controlled central presence, while Stefanie Bruckner’s Lucy brings sharp physical precision. Bartel Jespers offers flashes of absurd physical comedy as an oddly robotic cleaner. Yet the ensemble often feels as if it is executing the director’s conceptual design rather than fully inhabiting the material.
At times, the production seems eager to adopt the vocabulary of contemporary European theatre – devised structures, postdramatic collage, sudden stylistic ruptures, without quite finding the emotional or intellectual depth that gives such forms their power.
And yet, the most memorable moments arrive when the production briefly abandons its visual and conceptual excess: a giant inflatable red chair slowly rising in darkness; someone quietly vacuuming the stage; Alec standing alone under a single beam of light.
If The Uncontainable Nausea of Alec Baldwin occasionally feels overfull, its 90‑minute running time could benefit from some tightening, the production’s ambition is undeniable. In a world defined by relentless digital stimulation, the show raises a compelling question: what can theatre still offer that screens cannot?
Perhaps the answer lies in its quietest moments. When the stage empties of spectacle and a performer simply stands before us, something fragile appears – a fleeting but unmistakable sense of shared human presence.
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