The internet offers opportunities for escapism unimaginable to previous generations. Using a pseudonym, you can pass yourself off as any age, decide what sex you want to be and invent your life story. Ugly people can become ob-jects of desire and shy people can declaim with the self-confidence of Henry V. You can find whatever you want online. In Germany, Bernd-Jurgen Brandes volunteered to be eaten by Armin Meiwes. The cyber world is clearly worth a play, and congratulations to the writer Marcus Markou for attempting it with Age-Sex-Location.
Katherine Jakeways plays Rose, who has no use of her limbs. None the less, using a blow tube or voice recognition device, she can chat online without revealing her disabilities. She can unburden her sexual frustration in a torrent of obscenity. Through her computer, she enters into a sadistic relationship with the obese Trevor (Ewen Macintosh) who seeks degradation, convinced that he cannot satisfy his wife because of his small penis. Trevor moves on to other things, ultimately stalking the internet pretending to be a slim female. Rachael (Jane How) installs a webcam focused on her constantly tearful face, emitting to the world a real-time image of misery that spawns its own chatroom, where internet surfers speculate about why she cries unceasingly.
Dave is the genius who creates for such characters a world called Freetopia. Like a cyber etymologist, he catalogues human desires. He exploits frailties and lures pathetic specimens into the web, perhaps to add them to his collection of 31,456 people recorded saying "I love you", available for anyone to download. Dave wouldn't see himself as bad. He loves to help people escape into fantasy. For example, he creates a virtual reality for Rose in which she can use her limbs again. I thought Ed Stoppard an odd choice to play Dave. Handsome and self-assured, there's nothing in the least nerdish about him. I struggled to understand why someone so presentable and articulate could apparently relate to other people only through a computer screen, militantly protecting his anonymity and avoiding real contact.
If Dave is a control freak who reminds us of Shakespeare's Oberon, Gus (played by the Israeli actor and model Omer Barnea) is definitely Puck, a mischievous figure who can invade your computer screen, popping up with changing identities, to unmask you and destroy your cosy escapism. For example, he masquerades online as a little girl to confront Rachael with her daughter's death, the guilty secret that has led her to weep inconsolably.
In the second half of the play, we depart this world - not to join Oberon and the fairies, but to enter virtual reality. Dave creates a computer programme that will simulate his idea of a perfect girl. He makes her look like a real woman he has met online, but naturally he's not up to encountering a real person face to face. Other internet users can acquire a virtual replica of their family, a useful thing if you want to test, outside reality, how your wife and children might react if you decided to leave them.
The director-designer, Pip Pickering, deserves credit for accepting the challenge of staging Age-Sex-Location. The cyber world is presented through a dozen long white drapes on to which video images are projected with remarkable effects. Trevor shows his beer gut to a mirror, but the reflection we see is of a slender woman. Sven Ortel's video design allows any character to be duplicated on stage, appearing both in person and as an image projected on to the drapes. Such techniques may transform theatre.
So this is an imaginative piece on an interesting subject that has been strikingly staged - but it doesn't work as a play. The characters stare fixedly ahead, to represent people sitting at their computers. They exist in silos, with no physical interaction (although Gus is allowed to flit, spirit-like, among them). Dave promises us "emotional connectivity", but in fact we don't sense enough connection; we just aren't sufficiently interested in the drama of these people.
In the end, Rose rejects Dave's gift of virtual life - the computer programme that tricks her mind into believing that she can move her arms and legs - because it isn't real. Equally, Dave finds no satisfaction from his virtual perfect woman, perhaps because he forgot to programme her with any personal history. He cannot feel for her but, counter-intuitively, it is she who dumps him, even though she was never programmed to do so. The play alerts us to the extraordinary opportunities supplied by the internet - the chance to flee our predicaments and even our bodies - but it turns out that there are limits to escapism. Even when we enter a virtual world, we cannot forget reality, and only reality finally satisfies.
A thoughtful and original mind created this play and, as we surf it, we occasionally hit upon some exciting links. Unfortunately, the characters leave us virtually unmoved. Sorry, I won't be e-mailing this one to my buddy list.
Age-Sex-Location is at the Riverside Studios, London W6 (020 8237 1111) until 28 February
