By Peter Maddern
The increasing understanding of the evils of social media has been a common and necessary theme in this year’s Fringe and one that will surely persist for some years to come. The flyer for this show did not fill me with high hopes as it seemed I was headed for another hour of anti-Trump rhetoric – been there, done that.
Perhaps that explains the muted audience response to this production in situ at least. The Theatre Temoin team set about a devastating rebuttal of the social media industry and those who seek to profit from it – from ‘influencers’ to writers of the algorithms that make it tick.
A ‘right thinking’ journalist craving cyber world attention misuses her partner’s image of a dying Palestinian boy to juice up her opinion piece about the plight of the kid’s people. Her brother, who knows a thing or two about the mechanics of the social media system, enjoins an innocent young blogger in spreading the word. From there everyone’s circumstances spiral out of control with never much thought for the dead kid or his family – they are just fodder for the feeding of those seeking values to justify their relatively privileged lifestyles.
As mentioned the farce fails to attract the response it all deserves; seeing all manner of folk reach immediately for their phones once the bows had concluded perhaps is indicative that they didn’t see this as about them. Hopefully the cause is not lost.
This is a terrific production, inventive and controversial in its own way with all players doing a good job. More of it, so tweet madly now.
Kryztoff Rating 4K
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