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Stephen Nash | |
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I would
think everyone's life has been touched to some extent in the last 10
years by the emergence of the internet. Are we about to see contemporary
theatre itself transformed by the new digital technologies and the 'virtual'
world to which they have given rise? To begin with we are introduced to some of the characters logging on to a web site. The actors are separate from each other with lights indicating who is actually communicating at any one time. Trevor is a northern fat bloke wearing the local football team's shirt. He is a sad loser who disarmingly takes pride in telling everybody about his inadequacies. Rachel can't stop crying and nobody knows why. Rose Thorn is a disabled dominatrix and Jack was once a star of an 80s TV show called Super Monk. Each takes their turn in exploring both their own characters and their fantasies. As each actor mimics the stuttering interplay of the chat room, the results seem comic and absurd. In this way the interaction of cyberspace and the theatre creates a hybrid of the two. The disaggregated voices of the chat room make for a Pinteresque theatrical experience as each individual experience merely adds to the confusion and incoherence. Unfortunately, as many have found, the playing out of fantasies and the feeling that you are getting closer to the 'real you' via the web is merely an illusion. This is explored in more detail in the second half of the play and it is also the half where Markou attempts to impose some meaning onto the play. As the characters get more and more frenetic in their search for some kind of meaning in their virtual worlds, the line between the real and the virtual worlds begin to blur. The play contains a fine cast of actors and in the second half of the play they are allowed full rein as they explore their alter egos. I particularly enjoyed the performance of Richard Durden as McGill. He had become deluded before entering cyberspace as he confused the TV role that he had played in the 80s with reality. This perhaps indicates that the attempts by people to mediate reality in all kinds of ways actually have a longer history than the internet. Digital imagery and the real characters mix on the stage. Past personal histories are bought and sold and individuals are able to change genders as they seek answers to the problems they have experienced in their personal lives. Dave, convincingly played by Ed Stoppard, is the host of the website where the subscribers can play out their fantasies. He begins to see not just the futility and hollowness of the experiences but also something of greater significance. It is with this greater significance that gave me the greatest difficulties with this 'internet play'. As the computer program begins to wrest control of the website from Dave the programmer we get a little bit of 2001: A Space Odyssey meets Frankenstein. The virtual world that the human mind has sought out and created is now in control and no longer needs a human controller. Dave goes off to seek fulfillment in the real world with all of its struggles. This of course is a perfectly valid theatrical conclusion as the protagonist goes off into the wider world to seek answers through real human contact, but it somehow leaves you unconvinced. It feels derivative and doesn't do justice to some of the questions raised by the concept of the play. The problem with adapting cyberspace to the theatre is that you are exploring what one commentator has called the 'hollow world of our own unverified perceptions'. And yet it is a world that the internet generation is familiar with and understands and has to be tackled by the theatre. Social phenomena such as internet dating or the nostalgia inherent in sites such as Friends Reunited may offer further fruitful material for the theatre. Given the difficulties of adapting the digital world to the theatre, this is a thought-provoking and enjoyable play. Till 28 February 2004
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