“I’ve read the studies. No one has been able to draw a conclusive correlation between virtual behaviour and behaviour in-world.”
Just a quickie for this revisit to US playwright Jennifer Haley’s The Nether, first seen at the Royal Court last summer, which has now transferred to the Duke of York’s and as my colleague for the afternoon said afterwards, isn’t it great to see plays like this with productions like this in the West End. Weighty subjects like the abdication of responsibility in the digital age and the morality of sexual conduct online when it is ostensibly make-believe or “outside consequence” as one character puts it, and a production that reflects its Sloane Square origins in reuniting almost the entire cast without succumbing to big-name casting.
My original review can be read here and it still stands. Es Devlin’s design and Luke Halls’ video work look even better in the larger theatre, hugely slick both in the cool technological sweep of its 2050 setting but also in the elegant evocation of its online world, The Hideaway, where the mind is left to run riot as to what people might get up to in there. Amanda Hale and Stanley Townsend maintain their coolly combative partnership as law enforcer and online maestro respectively and there’s alternately skin-crawling and heart-breaking work from opposite ends of the age spectrum from David Calder and Zoe Brough/Isabella Pappas/Jaime Adler/Perdita Hibbins* (delete as appropriate).
