By Shawn Maus
The best part of a new-works festival is watching a play discover what it wants to become.
Cincinnati LAB Theatre’s Enemy of the Good is still being tested. Some scenes crackle. Others carry too much information. But Fred Rothzeid’s cautionary tale about artificial intelligence, human ambition and our belief that we can control what we create gives audiences plenty to argue about afterward.
That is exactly what a staged workshop should do.
Directed by Elizabeth a. Harris, the production features Torie Pate as Dr. Janet Noble, David Derringer as Charlie Goodman, Alexa Glaser as the LexNext Manager, Ryan Bowron as Victor and Brady Dunn as the Team Leader. The play is part of Cincinnati LAB Theatre’s 2026 New Works Festival at the Bell Tower Arts Pavilion in Evendale.
A mystery with larger consequences
Dr. Janet Noble has been convicted of committing horrific crimes while testing a revolutionary computer system. For her appeal, she hires Charlie Goodman, an attorney who has not practiced law in decades.
Did Noble commit the crimes? Why did she choose Goodman? And is her computer system the beginning of a better future—or the end of one?
The story reminded me of Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R.—Rossum’s Universal Robots, along with Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot stories and the moral puzzles of The Twilight Zone. Like those works, Enemy of the Good is not really asking whether machines are evil.
It is asking what machines reveal about us.
I am not frightened by artificial intelligence, although several people in the post-show talkback clearly were. The play does, however, give us good reason to pause. What happens when a system created to serve humanity begins judging humanity instead?
What works
The central mystery holds our attention, largely because Torie Pate refuses to make Dr. Noble easy to understand.
Pate crushes the role
Noble might be a brilliant scientist, a criminal, a victim or a calculating manipulator. At several points, I wondered whether the intelligence she created had already begun influencing—or controlling—her. Pate lets that suspicion hang in the air without announcing it.
David Derringer gives Charlie Goodman a necessary sense of wounded humanity. His scenes with Pate are strongest when the play stops explaining the technology and allows these two guarded people to test each other.
The supporting cast handles difficult material with confidence. This is a script filled with legal arguments, technical explanations and ethical questions. The actors keep those ideas attached to recognizable human needs: survival, control, vindication and the desire to prove we were right.
Harris also does strong work staging scenes inside a jail cell. Confinement is hard to block without making the actors appear frozen or strangely restless. She creates movement through shifting power rather than unnecessary pacing.
What drags
The play slows during two exposition-heavy sections.
Screenwriter Blake Snyder called this problem “the Pope in the pool:” when characters must deliver complicated information, something visually or dramatically interesting needs to happen at the same time. The audience keeps listening because it wants to know whether the Pope will jump into the pool. Without that tension, the actors stand still and explain the plot while everyone starts thinking about where they parked.
The information in Enemy of the Good matters. The delivery needs more conflict.
Facts could emerge because one character is hiding something, another is challenging it and someone else has misunderstood the truth. The audience should be putting the pieces together rather than receiving a briefing.
The chapel-like acoustics of the Bell Tower Arts Pavilion also made portions of the dialogue difficult to hear. Several audience members mentioned the same issue during the talkback. That becomes a real problem in a play where one sentence can change our understanding of a character or the technology.
Standout moments
Pate’s performance is the evening’s clearest standout. She makes Noble suspicious without turning her into an obvious villain.
The developing relationship between Noble and Goodman also gives the play its emotional center. The possible fate of humanity may drive the plot, but the play is most compelling when it focuses on two people with unfinished business.
The ending is another strength.
Without spoiling it, Rothzeid leaves the final moral judgment with the audience. It reminded me of Frank R. Stockton’s The Lady, or the Tiger? We are left to decide what happened—and what human nature is capable of doing.
The talkback proved that people reached very different conclusions.
What audiences will remember
Audiences will remember the question more than the technology:
Can an intelligence built to help humanity eventually decide that humanity is the problem?
They will also remember Dr. Janet Noble because the play never completely tells us who she is.
And they may leave, considering the possibility that catastrophe will not arrive with flashing warning lights and a robot announcing plans for world domination.
It may begin with one reasonable choice made by people who were certain they were doing good.
Shawn Says
Voltaire is commonly credited with the warning, “Perfect is the enemy of good.”
That sentiment feels especially fitting for Enemy of the Good. The play isn’t finished—it could benefit from tightening, particularly where exposition overtakes action—but its strengths are already evident. It offers a compelling foundation for further development and leaves audiences with plenty to discuss long after the curtain call.
I can easily imagine Enemy of the Good finding a home in regional theatres, college programs, and intimate venues such as Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park’s Shelterhouse Theatre. Cincinnati LAB Theatre’s Festival of New Works gives audiences the rare opportunity to experience a play while it’s still evolving, and Enemy of the Good is well worth that journey.
Cincinnati Lab Theatre’s Festival of New Works continues through June 25, 2026. You can see Enemy of the Good on July 23, and experience it yourself.
Get more information–and tickets HERE on their website.
