Photo credit: Edinburgh Fringe Programme
“Surveillance” was almost exactly what I expected it to be. A commentary on our escalating culture of privacy being “dead”. What was quite a nice surprise, is that the 45 minute slot was split up into 3 short plays.
The first of which was a surveillance centre in the USA, with the ability to spy on anyone. This was my least favourite of the three – it was very slow, and also very expected.
The second was a personification of signing up for Facebook – it was great – I wrote a similar play a few years ago and it was nice to see the same concept, but a little more polished.
The final play was much longer than the other 2, and made some interesting comments – unlike the first and second plays, stopping in reality, this play continued into a dystopian future of civil war between supporters and haters of technology implants.
I just don’t have much to say about this show – it was largely inoffensive. There was definitely more practice required, some of the characters often forgot each other’s names and it was just distracting.
Some of the acting was really really good, but with that said, some was average, and a couple of scenes were just not quite good enough compared to the rest of the show.
I recommend this show if you have an hour to kill, but not necessarily as something you should rush to. I think you’ll only enjoy it if you’re quite a tech-orientated person.
The humour wasn’t quite as good as the concept. I only laughed 4 or 5 times throughout, unfortunately.
Verdict: ★★★½
“Surveillance” runs daily at theSpace @ Northbridge, through to the end of the Fringe at 11.20/21.10.
By Lewis Forman