Beyond the Fence review – computer-created show is sweetly bland

Arts theatre, London
This software-generated Greenham Common musical is risibly stereotypical but pleasant as a milky drink

Plenty of musicals written by humans sound as if they have been composed by a machine. But guess what? When you get a computer to create a musical, as Sky Arts has done - using data compiled from the structure, scores and scripts of hundreds of musicals to generate scenario, melodies and many of the lyrics - it sounds just like a musical composed by a computer. Even when humans curate it. This show is as bland, inoffensive, and pleasant as a warm milky drink.

The software appears to have an extensive knowledge of Mills & Boon-style novellas but zero grasp of 1980s feminism and the Greenham Common women's peace camp. A pity, because that's where it's set.