Holy robots! Capek's 1920 play finally comes of age

In the past five months, wire news services have carried stories about new robots that can fetch bread, help the elderly out of bed, track whales, play violins, fill gas tanks and act like a monkey.

Where robotics is concerned, the future is here. What a perfect time for a retro-visit to the granddaddy of all robot stories: Karel Capek's 1920 play "R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)," a fascinating classic of science fiction, currently staged by Open Circle Theater in a fever dream of a production.

"R.U.R." is such a foundation of robot lore that the very word "robot" was born in Capek's story. The Czech author, visionary and satirist — among the early 20th-century writers predicting dystopian consequences of mass production and unlimited political and corporate power — derived the word (as suggested by his brother, Josef) from "robota," which literally means "serf labor."

Hard work is exactly the fate of robots in the vibrant, futuristic tale of "R.U.R." Set on a remote island, where Rossum's Universal Robots factory churns out artificial life but ignores the fallout of outnumbering mankind with robot slaves, the play follows a gradual, worldwide mutiny by our creations. (Capek's robots, by the way, are not clunky, mechanical things, but organic inventions with humanoid physiology.)

The beauty of the drama is that the audience experiences the rebellion through the shattered hopes and regrets of the robots' very makers.

While there is nightmarish action on a set resembling something out of classic "Star Trek" episodes, the bulk of the play finds the human characters reflecting on their original motives for building robots. Not surprisingly, there are echoes in their now-dashed ideals of the kind of 20th-century paradise promised by everything from socialism to technology to messianic dictators. "R.U.R." was and is as much a political and cultural allegory as thriller.

Director and set designer Walter Baker and an imaginative cast (including Andy Justus in an eerie performance as the robots' leader) bring such urgency to Capek's drama, there is little opportunity to get hung up on the occasional anachronistic phrase or general absurdity of the story. And despite its age, "R.U.R." has held up remarkably well: We now live in the age of rapidly evolving robots, and Capek's questions about whether we share our destiny with them seem rather prescient.

Tom Keogh: tomwkeogh@yahoo.com