Tech is stretching it’s long coded fingers into almost all areas of our lives. In the theatre, up the M40 in Stratford, the RSC has teamed up with Intel to give us a brand new untouchable digitized hologrammatical Tempest – and now in Lindsay Ferrentino’s new play Ugly Lies the Bone we get a glimpse of the practical uses of Virtual Reality software in the treatment of PTSD.
Sounds interesting right? And it was, fairly.
A striking set design and soundscape help to suggest to a real world audience that a real world play happening before their actual eyes has an element of virtual reality involved – and kudos really ought to go the technicians who have animated the hell out of this production.
Kate Fleetwood’s lead has returned from modern day warzone carrying the physical and mental scars of battle. She’s back in her small than small home town, living with her mother and apparently desperately depressed. She is constant pain and struggling to re-assimilate to ‘normal’ life.
Ralf Little works in the gas station and it soon becomes obvious that they share a deeper, more complex, non-gas station related past. Will they rekindle? Will there be any prospect of the resumption of a semblance of normal familial life
Interesting if not exceptional.
3/5
