Using Apple laptops, overhead projection, a TV video screen and a wide range of other low-tech props, playwright Bea Roberts has constructed a digital-age Madame Bovary that cleverly uses social media to unfold the plot.
Roberts for the most part remains on her knees throughout the performance pressing buttons or manipulating slides for projection. No actors are needed here. The action is mostly on a screen, just like our real social media lives. But occasionally she will charge about under a duvet which acts as a veil that captures projected media images of perfect fantasy women or men, or hands out bowls of cheese puffs to engage the audience more closely during a party sequence. The presentation reminded me of Laurie Anderson’s creative welding of art with music, only here it was art meets script. Despite the PowerPoint wizardry there was a refreshing ‘home-made’ informal feel to the proceedings. Roberts is just ‘there’ doing it. As well as the electronics she uses simple devices as visual metaphors to great effect – such as adding more and more plastic glasses to an overhead projection to portray a workmate’s party getting further into the sauce.
The Bovary theme still resonates of course. For those suffering silently in dull relationships, marriages and dead-end careers will, like the Madame herself, inevitably reach a critical moment when the everyday has to be breached, when inner goddesses demand to be released! Here it happens online.
Emma Barnicott is married to steady Paul, and is employed at a plumbing firm on a trading estate somewhere near Plymouth. Line management warnings reveal Emma to be a disaffected employee, perhaps in the last chance saloon working on the helpdesk. But this is where the magic begins! The helpdesk is connected to the outside world. Grumpy complaining customers have to be soothed, and one, Kick, begins to detect the person behind the soothing is someone worth finding out more about. We experience the development of the relationship as it is typed via ensuing emails.
Roberts’ playful observations about intimacy, being overweight and general sexiness are funny and fascinating, fearful and frank. As a backstory we are also helped to flesh out our opinions of husband Paul through the more perfunctory nature of his messages – mostly function, no feel. The audience has to be on its toes to follow the quick-fire communications. Amongst them is a particularly amusing jibe at Emma’s mother’s typing speed which will no doubt resonate with the younger members of the audience.
Helped by a great sound track by Keegan Curran, Roberts builds towards the inevitable denouement. She recognises that profound theatre can be found in unlikely places – in drab business parks or on anonymous computer screens, and that desire and yearning will always find a way to connect, if not to always end well. With Infinity Pool Roberts puts a twenty-first century spin on an old classic. With effortless command over the lingo of the laptop and her precise observations into humdrum lives, Roberts is a writer to take seriously. Go and see this, it’s funny, it’s sad, and it’s very, very different. ★★★★☆ Simon Bishop 10/07/15
