Connected

Project Arts Centre, Dublin

Connected is a conventional story of modern male friendship. In the case of Daz (Karl Quinn) and Simon (Will Irvine), who sit side by side in Internal Accounts, it is a friendship played almost entirely in the virtual world: by email, where they can play tricks on each other; in Desert Blast, where they can be war heroes; and in Second Life, where they create idealised version of themselves and where they can confess the secrets that they cannot communicate to each other face to face.

In the real world, Daz and Simon's friendship is under pressure, measured out as it is by adolescent insults about each other's mothers and male and female genitalia. As work deadlines loom, Simon feels the pressure, while Daz is content to shirk responsibility in favour of his commitment to his players on his Fantasy Football team.

Iseult Golden's direction infuses every moment of the piece with distinct physicality, and the transitions between the real and the virtual world are particularly entertaining.

There are funny subtle touches: the sound of the computer rebooting to indicate time passing, Colm Maher's screen-glow lighting, and the stilted movement of the actors when playing their life-like avatars, particularly Irvine's Sisyphus.

However, the material is stretched a little thin over 55-minutes. The juvenile jibes become a bit repetitive, but more problematic is the fact that the unwaveringly adolescent nature of the characters prevents the play from achieving any sub-textual depth. This may be the point that Irvine and Quinn, as co-writers, are trying to make, but there is surely more complexity to male psychology than an obsession with sex and repressed attraction to each other.

As a piece of light entertainment, Connected is a success, but ultimately it reproduces the superficiality of the digital world it critiques.

– Runs until February 19th

– Sara Keating