Theatre / bea roberts
Review: Infinity Pool, Brewery Theatre
If you’re tired of Shakespeare, speeches and traditional theatre, this show could be just the thing for you. The digital storytelling experience is performed and written by a single actor, Bea Roberts, who doesn’t say a word for the whole performance.
Instead, the story of bored admin worker and mum Emma Barnicoff is told through three laptops, two projectors, a TV and an old video player, with other characters appearing on screen in different fonts – most memorably Emma’s lively but patronising boss Claire in lurid green Comic Sans.
The only element where this doesn’t work is in the (inevitable) association of the person on stage with the protagonist in the story. Given the 20-year age difference between them, parts of the dialogue feel far-fetched unless you see Roberts as simply a puppetmaster.
is needed now More than ever
The show is billed as a modern re-telling of Flaubert’s great nineteenth-century novel Madame Bovary, but don’t let that worry you if your – ahem – memory of the book lets you down. This is as much Bridget Jones as Bovary, and it’s bang-up-to-date.
Stuck in a tedious job on a Devon trading estate, in a marriage that’s gone sour, Emma Barnicoff hooks up with one of her customers online. So follows a touching series of exchanges that we read rather than hear, making it all rather intimate.
All seems to be going well until Emma gets drunk at a party, and then the real fun starts. The second half of the show is utterly absorbing and goes further into Emma’s desires, involving celebrity magazines, more clothes than she can afford and, of course, the affair itself. Alongside the film images these are supported by fantastic sound effects by Keegan Curran.
There is so much visual trickery here that it would be easy to dismiss the show as tech magic. But it’s the story that shines through, as vulnerable Emma demands empathy from the audience and cuts a humorous, if hapless figure. As her dad says, “We’re all idiots when it comes down to it.” Everyone except Bea Roberts, that is.
Infinity Pool continues at the Brewery Theatre until Saturday, July 11. For more info and to book details, visit www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com/shows/detail/infinity_pool
Pics: Farrows Creative