by Diana Miranda
It’s usually stated that storytelling units people aside from the remainder of the animal kingdom. What nobody says is that telling tales is not any rudimentary act, however a labyrinth of tangents, digressions, and U-turns. Enter Brave Mirror Productions and Attention Span, “a series of short sketches for people with short attention spans,” as its creators put it. This high-energy satire turns the thoughts inside out to dive into its rabbit holes, unravelling the tangled internet throughout the human mind.
Joseph Hollas’ fast-paced play encompasses a assortment of bite-sized tales delivered to life due to a multi-roling forged (Joe Deighton, Daniel Golding, Finn Lanchester, Tallula White, Danielle De Vries). A nerdy narrator acts as an emcee, studying from his trusty Amazon Kindle to cue up numerous characters, together with a needy cell phone, an excitable canine that turns right into a Don Juan, and a rising star so common that he actually burns to the contact.
Directed by Jamie Saul, the performers zip on and off stage as swiftly as intrusive ideas about our lunch cravings. An air of mockery permeates the present, with exaggerated performances and ridiculous conditions underscoring every state of affairs, be it a crowded tube carriage, the gates of heaven and even Jeff Bezos’ humanity-saving rocket (Amazon App on the prepared!)
Attention Span is undeniably disjointed, the performers powering by means of its loosely outlined plot. But what’s actually intelligent in regards to the present is the sequence of wormholes that miraculously join a few of the skits. Take, as an illustration, the tube experience that includes rowdy partygoers and a pissed off pregnant girl, who simply so occurs to be carrying the narrator’s baby. She reappears later, babe in arms, to confront him as he offers with Cupido grappling with a midlife disaster and making ready for a bike stunt. Recurring motifs maintain popping again up like a bungee wire, and isn’t that precisely what the bounce between focus and distraction is like? Brave Mirror has crafted a present during which kind and content material are cleverly aligned.
From parks to boardrooms, onstage displays show numerous places – the confines of the screens echoing the fragmented nature of our restricted consideration spans. And no present referred to as Attention Span could be full with out the head of quick-content tradition: wacky TikTok-style movies that depart each narrator and audiences scratching their heads.
Playful cardboard props lend a deliciously analogue vibe to the storytelling, making the satire much more satisfying. These props underscore how trivial and throwaway our distractions could also be – like making a cup of tea, switching to espresso, or raiding the fridge for some cheese.
At its core, the present is a mockery of modern-day consideration deficits (oh look, an ice cream van), fuelled by our obsession with prompt gratification (oh look, a good bigger ice cream van!) and know-how dependancy, from social media to app dependency (is {that a} BBC Breaking News Alert I heard?). In fact, who can’t relate to that? Its reliance on over-the-top silliness because it packs an array of skits in 50 minutes is perhaps unpolished, however it ensures an evening of laughter and unabashed cultural commentary.
Attention Span runs by means of August 22.
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