Review: R.O.I. (RETURN ON INVESTMENT) at Hampstead Theatre

Directed by Chelsea Walker, the tropes and stereotypes are writ large in the opening to Aaron Loeb’s sci-ethics drama, in which the technical details are necessarily truncated but the wider implications and discussion topics are merged with grandiose theoretical conundrums, creating an intellectually engaging drama but one which rarely pushes our empathy buttons.

Letty Thomas plays Willa McGovern a genius with MIT and Harvard credentials sufficient to whet the investing appetites of May and her boss/partner Paul played by Millicent Wong and Lloyd Owen respectively. The idea that gene manipulation could eradicate cancer, Alzheimer’s and a host of other diseases is not entirely new, but has always become bogged-down in the ethical questions related to designer babies and here the simplistic trivialisation is mocked as it has been elsewhere. So, just what limits must be placed on cures? Do we for example consider homosexuality something which should be screened for and eradicated as undesirable? Should we look for aggression as a defect and genetically aim to limit its worst excesses if identified in a foetus? Such notions present a minefield with a multiplicity of nuanced viewpoints and once Pandora’s box has been opened it won’t easily be resealed.

In reality, venture capitalists looking for the next futurecorn, unicorn and decacorn investment opportunity, aren’t your typical Dragon’s Den TV investor. Identifying potential multi-$billion returns based on scalability, with short runways and low burn rates, is an art form all its own. Apologies for the jargon — those years I spent working for a Silicon Valley start-up which became a market leader and went global in 25 years, leave their mark.

Here, in a Frankenstein’s monster situation, the investors become the pawns and victims in the innovator’s long-game, as we learn how Willa has developed a theory about global players which disturbingly has formed along racial lines. It is not long before she is citing Chinese and Jewish Israeli state actors as working against the best interests of the global, Western and scientific communities. During the process she becomes more capitalist than her investors and when challenged, thinks nothing of humbling and humiliating one of them in front of an FDA Congressional Committee which serves as a high point in the play, and a low point in human kindness. Later we see an older May (Sarah Lam) living with the results of an earlier, idealistic decision which demonstrated agency, but had consequences.

Rosie Elnile’s deep pile carpeted set is abutted upstage by a wall bank of neatly designed drawers, cupboards and projection panels, all of which are deployed to great effect as each scene changes and desks are choreographically shifted by the cast. A door closer refused to play nicely on opening night and will undoubtedly require attention if it is not to become a source of irritation to the players and a distraction for audiences. Otherwise, this cerebral and compact yarn serves as a neat foray into the world of pharma and tech investing, where monstrous back-slapping and machiavellian manoeuvres are standard fare for those who enter the fray.

R.O.I. (RETURN ON INVESTMENT) continues at the intimate Hampstead downstairs space until 11th April and has a running time of 1hr and 40mins played straight through without an interval.