Control
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https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2025/control
Date Reviewed: 22/10/2025
CONTROL – A Chilling Glimpse Into Our Near Future
Written by Keziah Warner | Presented by Theatre Works, 2025 Season
Presented in three dynamic acts, Keziah Warner’s chillingly prophetic sci-fi drama, Control, takes audiences on a cerebral and emotional journey through space, time and the ethics of technology. Strap yourselves in for 100 minutes of theatre that feels more like a warning from the future than a work of fiction, one that will have you questioning who, or what, is truly in control.
Visually, this production is stunning in its simplicity. The set design and lighting shift fluidly between worlds, grounding us in each timeline while heightening the sense of otherworldly detachment. The use of subtitles for accessibility is a welcome and inclusive touch, a subtle reminder that communication, in all its forms, is central to this play’s beating heart.
The first act sets the tone with a burst of energy and claustrophobic intensity. Four individuals, Andrew, Elizabeth, Jake, and Laura, who awaken from suspended sleep aboard a ship hurtling toward Mars. Their mission: to document humanity’s first steps to a new H.O.M.E (Hospitality and Operation Mars Encampment). With an omnipresent AI known as AstroLady guiding their every move and mission, the façade of a reality-TV-style space mission begins to fracture. As the cameras stop rolling, cracks appear in trust, identity and purpose. What begins as a televised adventure soon feels eerily intimate, unsettlingly close to our own obsessions with surveillance and performance.
Act Two shifts gears in both tone and time, fast-forwarding twenty years into a hauntingly recognisable future. Inside The Museum of Childhood, where memories are no longer carried but archived and exchanged, Warner’s sharp writing explores what it means when technology curates our very identities. The two human staff, Nicki and Caroline and their humanoid superior Alex, deliver scenes layered with wit, poignancy and quiet dread. Here, the line between privacy and progress blurs completely, a thought experiment rendered with elegance and unease.
By Act Three, thirty years later, we’ve crossed another threshold, where artificial intelligence has taken on the form of functional assets such as teachers, cleaners, lovers. Here, Control reaches its emotional and philosophical peak, exploring the essence of humanity itself: our longing, our creativity, our capacity for choice. It’s confronting, moving and executed with breath-taking precision.
What Control does best is hold up a mirror to our present moment. It’s not the distant sci-fi setting that unsettles us; it’s the reflection of our own world staring back. Our dependence on devices, our hunger for documentation, our willingness to hand over choice for convenience all play out before us, magnified just enough to sting.
As the lights fade, one question lingers long after the final line: Do we shape technology, or has it already begun shaping us?
Control is an unmissable experience. Sharp, inventive and profoundly relevant. Catch it while you can at Theatre Works before reality catches up.