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Company of Sirens & good cop bad cop present the Welsh premier of The Nether by Jennifer Haley |
The Nether is a dark, dystopian play that explores the worst of human behaviour in a world where we live almost entirely in a virtual reality. It is disturbing but it is compulsive viewing. You can’t look away no matter how much you want to.The Nether is set in the not too distant future where anyone and everyone can live vicariously through an avatar, where every experience and ever possibility can be explored. Yet, the lines between reality and virtual existence have become blurred and some, obsessed with their virtual existence, are beginning to “cross over” to subsume themselves in their virtual existence completely. This premise is powerful because it’s believable. There’s so much to explore in this set-up yet writer Jennifer Haley has focused specifically and deliberately on the darkest corners of this virtual universe, where adults grab the opportunity to explore their darkest, and criminal, fantasies. The Hideaway is one of the darkest corners of The Nether, a paedophile’s paradise created by a Mr Sims who provides his guests with the perfect getaway for them to explore every part of these darkest fantasies. It may be distasteful, it may sicken us. In reality Mr Sims would be jailed for life. But in The Nether, is this activity safe? If you create an avatar and your avatar is a serial paedophile, is that a crime? And specifically, is a virtual paedophile as real a threat as one in reality? The Nether” isn’t a play for the ages. Its appeal is that of a crafty short story with lurid topical resonance. Imagine an episode of “Law & Order: SVU,” written by a futurist fiction writer like Ray Bradbury or Iain Banks. But as a parable for where we’re headed on the highway in the digital sky, “The Nether” exerts a vicelike grip, while taking you down avenues of thought you probably haven’t travelled yet. After the show, you will probably not feel like turning on your computer or smart phone. You may, though, feel an overwhelming urge to take a shower Seligman Theatre, Chapter, Market Road, Canton, Cardiff, CF5 1QE / Theatr Seligman, Chapter, Heol y Farchnad, Treganna, Caerdydd, CF5 1QE 15th – 25th March 2017 at 20:00 and 25th at 14:30 / 15fed – 25ain Mis Mawrth 2017 20:00, a 25ain am 14:30 |
| Company of Sirens web site: https://www.ald.org.uk/show-company/company-of-sirens |
| Chris Durall e-mail: cadurnall@gmail.com |
Friday, February 17, 2017 |
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