Colourful, chaotic, and cruel is the internet. At least that’s how Tim Price depicts it in his new play Teh Internet Is Serious Business at The Royal Court.
In a fictional account of how two British teenagers brought down the websites of a few US government departments and huge international corporation as part of the hacking groups Lulzsec and Anonymous, the play brings the online world of trolls, hackers, and memes onto the stage with amusing and pertinent consequences.
Agoraphobic Shetlander Jake, and 16-year old schoolboy Mustafa, are both social outcasts. The internet offers them a sanctuary, albeit an ambiguously moral one, for as they descend further into the online world they become involved in dubious, and often criminal activity. The boys’ oblivious descent into criminality raises pertinent questions about the extent to which the internet should, is and can be censored, which in a post-Snowden and Wikileaks age is one of the most necessary and interesting debates of our time.
The play’s undeniably fun. Hamish Pirie’s staging of the online world often resembles the The Banana Splits Adventure Hour, with wacky, furry costumes, a ball pit centre stage, and bizarre choreography to illustrate computer code. It’s also really funny (in parts), although some jokes may a bit too close to the bone for the more staid and priggish members of the audience. But, this excitement doesn’t necessarily translate into getting the play’s message across.
The play doesn’t explore the depth of its characters or storyline that much, and the characters are two-dimensional. Of course in part this is because the characters are social recluses, and as such are not the easiest characters to relate to. But there are also plenty examples of literary loners who we care about.
Fundamentally, Price just doesn’t give enough thought to his characters’ emotions or lives. It often seems he’s too concerned with getting a joke out of the situation or emphasizing his grand debate, rather than exploring the psychology of his characters. When the FBI come knocking on the door of an American hacker to take him away; it doesn’t affect us. Even when he protests, and claims not no one will be able to care for his children; it doesn’t affect us. Equally, when our main protagonist Jake is slowly slipping away from reality to his mother’s desperation – we don’t really care – and that’s because she disappears from his world by falling into the ball pit at the front of the stage.
Of course it’s difficult to render the amoral maelstrom of the internet with any empathy or sympathy. The facelessness and anonymity, and the brutal trolling that it encourages, is almost written into the constitution of the internet, which indeed Price alludes to in the play. But, given that it does so well in bringing to life so many other aspects of the online world, it’s a shame that Teh Internet Is Serious Business doesn’t do more to make us care about its protagonists. The ideas that the play seeks to unpack are necessary, compelling and edgy. It’s also great fun. But all of that is rather irrelevant, for ultimately it fails to make an impact, thus rendering its noble aim redundant.
Teh Internet Is Serious Business is part of the Royal Court Theatre’s ‘Big Idea’, offering audiences radical thinking and provocative discussion inspired by the work on stage. The production runs in the Jerwood Theatre downstairs until the 25th October. For more information and tickets, visit the website.
