Theatre Review: Expelled – Anti-Social Media, Or The Void Behind The Video

March 6, 2024

 

By BRUCE DENNILL

 

Expelled / Directed by Craig Freimond / Golden Arrow Studio, Baxter Theatre, Cape Town

 

The fallout from poorly judged social media posts is an almost daily topic in most modern households, and the poison fomented on platforms from TikTok to Instagram and Facebook continues to cause pain, confusion and various tragic outcomes anywhere people are in community, from workplaces to churches and sports teams to schools.

It’s in the latter context that playwright Rosalind Butler positions her new play, Expelled, a drama and dark comedy that unpacks the effect of a stupid teenage escapade on a family, romantic relationships and more. A young man, Alex (Nicolas Hattingh), attends an elite private high school, where he is part of a group of scholars – not necessarily friends, but boys who hang out together – some of whom act out something nasty and cruel and others who cheer them on. The incident is filmed and shared, and so begin the highlighting of the of one aspect of the piece’s theme.

This thread examines more than just the fact that sharing dicey material is stupid, but also that this aspect of the situation often overshadows the more worrying issues: why are social media users doing the awful things they sometimes share, and why are they not being called out for those actions, rather than on the scandal caused by the video of what happened being shared? Could we positively affect the latter issue by focusing more on the first one? Expelled only takes on that facet of the problem tangentially, possibly missing a trick in terms of adding to the already considerable drama.

Alex’s parents, Lou (Charmaine Weir-Smith) and Richard (Anthony Coleman) are obviously drawn into their son’s alarming set of circumstances, and respond from the respective spaces of their own hurt and confusion – which have already given the couple challenges of their own beyond an errant offspring. Lou is more addicted to social media than just about any teenager and, though she generally remains involved in the more benign parts of the platforms in terms of the potential to harm in what she posts, her judgment of how events impact others is somewhat shaky. Richard is tied to his phone for different reasons, using it both to stay in touch with what’s happening in the news and as a shield against needing to get socially involved. This strategy, allied to his wife’s full-time addiction and his son’s online social life means that he’s rather disconnected from his family. Some of the reasons for his behaviour are unpacked later in the play, but at his most tightly wound, Richard gives Coleman the opportunity to provide the production’s most intense moment as he confronts his son after the video that threatens to get Alex expelled from school goes viral.

The action includes a number of laughs, but many of them are uncomfortable, as the audience sees in the character delivering the line – or being the punchline – a clear reflection of themselves and their own behaviour on or as a result of their social media platforms. What plays out on stage is not fantasy; it’s just a choreographed example that, but for some of the specifics, could happen (and has happened) to so many already. As such, it’s worrying – an indictment of contemporary society that doesn’t come with easy solutions.

The impact of all of this is increased by the imposing set (designed by Kieran McGregor) and the videos projected onto it (designed by Daniel Rutland Manners), which bring both the compelling visuals of a phone screen and the paradoxical public intimacy that comes with staring at such a screen into play. The performances feel similarly amplified, with Weir-Smith bring a hyperactive energy to frustrated wife and devote mother Lou; Coleman making Richard almost aggressively conservative (which still allows for a measure of nuance); and Hattingh as intensely sincere, while being completely misguided, as only a brash Matric student can be.

There is room for more subtlety here, but the thematic marks are all clearly hit, asking some difficult questions, inspiring the occasional gasp and raising some grim smiles along the way.

 

Discover more from Bruce Dennill

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading