"Bubble" Review

“Bubble” Review

"Bubble” by Kieran Hurley is a politically driven sociological story harkening to the mixed intentions and quick escalations between progressives and reactionaries in the latter half of the past decade, told by Theatre Uncut through a fresh and experimental but ultimately messy format akin to online social media messengers. Utilising lockdown to craft an immersive experience as if you aren’t just watching but are participating in an online debate, “Bubble” throws plenty of ethical dilemmas at the audience who can do nothing but watch as these mixtures of values and issues bubble and boil and create new issues and escalating into harrowing reminder of contemporary politics and bold reality we don’t just watch but also are forced to participate in. “Bubble” is a great and engaging watch, despite suffering from some presentation issues, that I would recommend to everyone, especially the politically minded, so long as they are aware of the subjects it touches on.

Content Warning: full disclosure, this review will make many direct references to contemporary culture and politics, as well as touching on some serious and uncomfortable aspects of society, some subjects mentioned include sexism, fascism, alt-right, Charlottesville, online harassment, toxic masculinity, and murder, and if discussion of any of those subjects make you feel uncomfortable or anxious, I recommend you not read this review or watch “Bubble”.

This forty-five-minute-long well-paced online play is, in my opinion, one of the best contemporary examples of political theatre. Instead of focusing on one issue, it takes the realistic approach showing that issues do not exist in a vacuum and that in reality when something occurs it often has an assortment of other issues that factor in, especially when the original issue is a sociological one such as feminism. In this story, after a small but not insignificant sexist remark from a lecturer, a group chat of university students reacts in a diverse and realist set of takes on the issue. These range from criticism to outrage, apathy to empathy, social improvement to cheap opportunism. Consequences unfold and drama increases, with a student journalist stirring up trouble and the administration handling the situation poorly and activists just trying to get people to understand and minor aspects like safe spaces alienating some allies and the plain concept of feminism enraging far-right extremists. The issue unravels and spreads through other various issues into a wide debate involving the progressives simply trying to get other people to understand the problem and fascists trying to shut down all criticism and all attempts for social justice in the name of ‘free speech’. This culminates in a protest and anti-protest, spurred on my far-right reactionaries and a white nationalist spokesperson in a crusade against the idea of feminism, resulting in one well-intentioned character being attacked and going into critical condition.

This play draws clear allusions to two important events of the late 2010s that exemplify the issues in contemporary society: the protest at the University of California, Berkeley, and the 2017 Charlottesville rally. The former being a protest against a right-wing figure speaking at the university that then got out of hand when it clashed with anti-protesters, and the latter being a protest against the tearing down of confederate statues that became a rally that got out of hand when these alt-right protesters attacked the anti-protesters, leading to one woman getting hit by a car and killed. Hurley uses these events, and others like them, to inform the escalation of his story in a realistic way, and even uses the tragedy of the Charlottesville rally as the climax. The language and imagery Hurley uses harkens the audience back to these recent events and gives the play a powerfully realistic sense, showing to the audience that the story being told to them has happened before in real life, and it could happen again.

An important note about “Bubble” is that no one is perfect, and no group of people is perfect either, and it also seems like there’s enough views presented that the watcher’s own views are likely represented, allowing for self-reflection through the imperfect characters. The characters are well developed, showing such interesting characters as the uncaring Anna who finds the whole situation banal, the activist Hannah who sees the incident as a part of a wider issue that should be tacked, the well-meaning Connor who wants to do right but takes a more values-neutral stance on the process of justice, the opportunistic Courtney who pretends to take sides but only seeks to stir things up for her own gain, the outdated Doctor Barrett who tries to cover his tracks and make surface-level amends but keeps making things worse, the liberal Doctor Hoefferscheid who is so tolerant she refuses to stand against fascism but openly finds feminism to be going too far, the polite and socially-conscious Jane who does good through the ‘proper’ processes, and the toxic Preston who, likely an incel, constantly goes on about how lonely he is and how it’s everyone else’s fault while simultaneously insulting them and falling deeper into alt-right bigoted fascist groups that prey on his faults.

Hurley refreshingly bites back at the so-called Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) who, in real life, fight against feminism under the guise of men’s rights, and are represented in “Bubble” with nuance showcasing examples of the worst like Preston, and the ones who unwittingly side with them who had truly good intentions like Connor. The majority of the MRA movement is focused around reactionary beliefs and a ‘return to the good old days’, preying on isolated young men who feel excluded in society and need a scapegoat to make themselves feel better, allowing the MRA and other reactionary movements to blame marginalised groups and the slow march towards equality in the past century or so. We see this in the play with Preston who clearly has low self-esteem because he is unliked, which is a result of his toxic behaviors but he sees himself as unliked because he is white, already falling into the beliefs that white people are the ‘real’ oppressed people. MRAs pretend to fight for men’s rights, as their name suggests, but “Bubble” reveals that their views aren’t of helping men but by blaming their issues on others, and as Preston is shown that he doesn’t believe it is his personal qualities that make him unlikable, and he doesn’t consider therapy, and instead he believes it’s unchangeable qualities, things he can’t ‘fix’ like his race or gender that makes him unlikable and that everyone should change for him. As the play progresses it shows how deeper he falls into the MRA ideology and eventually he helps turn the debate into that of free speech. Hurley further dissects the movement and their relationship with free speech by showing how their whole goal is to suppress the feminist voices for being feminist and to punish a private meeting for not allowing everyone in, even though it’s a private meeting. Hurley shows the nonsensical views of the MRAs and their reactionary far-right associates in the climax as the presence of white nationalists and fascists and other alt-right members ends up removing any doubt from the character’s minds (besides Preston) that these people don’t actually care about justice and instead simply seek control. As Preston says when announcing Randy P is coming to talk about the freedom of speech; “you better shut up and listen”.

Kieran Hurley also uses the character of Connor to show how values-neutral governance doesn’t work. In the play, when Randy P and his white nationalist, MRA, and fascist followers are announced to be coming to their university for a rally, some of the characters are openly against allowing this. Connor, citing ‘free speech’ fights for their right to have such a rally and have these beliefs because, in his eyes, the process of silencing people is bad, regardless of if they deserved to be silenced. This sentiment echoes many centrists who did not support the alt-right rally in Charlottesville but sided with them simply because they believed it was their right to say it, even though one of their core ideals was to silence every other kind of person. The weight of his actions finally hits Connor at the end when he realises they really are fascists aiming to shut down the free speech of others so they could only prop up their own, but by this point its already clearly too late. Hurley gives us social commentary through this saying that tolerating everyone, including those who are intolerant, will only lead to more intolerance and the creation of an intolerant society, and the only way to have a truly tolerant society is to not tolerate intolerance, which is essentially the overall theme of the play.

Expanding upon the earlier comment that not everyone is perfect, I enjoy how Hurley avoids painting the women as all paragons of virtue and shows how they can be just as toxic as everyone else, but also shows how being a toxic woman is not the same as being a toxic man, again dealing with one issue becoming nuanced by existing in a society with many other issues factoring in. One way of showing this was with Hannah’s brash nature hurting everyone. At one point, Hannah uses clear hyperbole saying “kill all men” that the sensationalist journalist sees as an opportunity to create clickbait news and stir up more controversy, leading to Hannah being sent death threats and rape threats. This can be compared to the inciting incident of the lecturer using inappropriate language that he explains was both hyperbole and actually meant something appropriate and the reactions to such can be compared, such as how people like Anna and Ruth at first found the lecturer’s remarks shocking but funny and then Preston came on to defend as what he said to be just fine, however when Hannah’s remarks are publicised to the world there is barely anyone jumping to defend her. This is an unfortunate reality for many women who are vocal in society on issues such as these. In society, women are rarely allowed to use exaggerated statements to get a message across without being taken literally and attacked for it, and yet a man could straightforwardly and sincerely say the same about woman and would be defended for it by those same people now claiming it is satire or ‘just a joke’. Even not using hyperbole and simply saying a calm and reasoned set of beliefs can and often will be attacked by the reactionary Men’s Rights Activists prevalent online. This is seen in the play as the proper and polite Jane is constantly courteous and reasonable and only tries to promote change through the ‘proper’ channels and yet is still sworn at and called a ‘feminazi’ and a ‘social justice warrior’, a derogatory right-wing term used to categorise anyone trying to promote equality or any positive changes to society. This is reminiscent of modern celebrities like Brie Larson who claimed that there should be more female and people of colour reviewers as that profession is largely dominated by older white men, and was then met with a barrage of online hate, with the myth that she screamed “kill all men” in that speech being perpetuated, even to this day. Similarly, even women who aren’t celebrities and just made short YouTube videos pointing out sexist tropes in video games, such as Anita Sarkeesian, have been the subject of intense and constant harassment campaigns that continue even now, nearly a whole decade after the original videos were posted. This shows that, even with short moments in his play, Kieran Hurley clearly has his finger on the pulse of modern online politics and the rise of harassment thanks to the internet.

I also find it interesting that the first couple of reactions from women to the inciting incident is to find it funny, and the first reaction that takes it seriously is from a man, Connor. This small aspect unravels into a wider nuance of the play as it portrays truly little in black and white. What I found most fascinating was the many examples of problematic but understandable takes from the women themselves, from the good-intentioned and active Ruth who is also notably ignorant but is also aware of this and still tries her best, and the sensationalist student reporter Courtney who reveals theirself as a true centrist on all opinions and only pretending to take a side when it appears to help her create a clickbait title, to the apolitical and apathetic Anna who was the target of the original incident, and the political and socially conscious Hannah who tries her best to fight for justice but is vilified for her straightforwardness and brash hyperbole. The standout character in my opinion is Jane, who, much like Hannah, is very socially conscious but also very polite throughout the play, and yet shows how being polite can also be a weakness, exemplifying that for a woman seeking social justice, there’s not really any way to go about it without being demonised.

I’ve spoken enough about the nuances of the story and it’s many parallels to real life. I really want to note what a wonderful job the actors did in this production.

Firstly, “Bubble” seems like the perfect kind of play that can be produced during lockdown but it was fascinating to find out that the play was planned and produced before the pandemic and was only finished in the first week of the quarantine here in the UK. Secondly, much of the shots are fantastic despite being relatively simple. For example, when Connor discusses how he doesn’t know how to use Facebook, he is shown essentially holding his phone in a careless way and the camera jumps around, while everyone else, more attuned to handling it, is almost always steady. This comes back again with Doctor Barrett who is filmed from an awkwardly high angle, both characterising him through his computer illiteracy but also framing him as small and insecure on the screen. I only noticed this in my third watch but I found the details like this to be great, as well as the background and contextual details, as everyone was filmed both acting out what they texted and also doing things in their daily lives that they would be doing rather than just in a blank room focused on reading their lines.

The best part of the production is hands down the phenomenal acting throughout. This play has talents from six universities across Scotland, Denmark, Spain, Portugal, and England, and so has a beautiful array of accents, similar to a real-life multicultural university.

The two stand out performances for me were that of Malou Keiding as Jane and Ed Larkin as Preston. Keiding is able to speak volumes and express her character without even saying a word, from her mannerisms to the way she sits and the way she utilises her surroundings and actions inform the audience of what kind of person she is playing. Keiding also performs with clear language and a perfect pace to create a character that is actively thinking about every word they choose to use, crafting a performance that engages the audience into hanging on her every word, as well as believing there is so much not being said. Ed Larkin portrays the socially awkward, emotionally stunted Preston with a surprising amount of nuance. Larkin is able to jump from a speech from the heart of a broken boy to the dismissive spouting of rhetoric that has been drilled into this characters head to the rehearsed speech boiling with ideology that uses words and sentence structure the character seemingly wouldn’t use when talking off the top of his head, and Larkin delivers all of these different modes of speech while maintaining the prevalent anxiety and low self-esteem of the character through a lack of expression and an common inability to look straight at the camera, as well as with the monotone speech that a character who likely doesn’t speak much would sound like. Normally these would be the staple of poor acting but since it fits so perfectly for the character Larkin is playing, I like to believe that it is done on purpose. Even without the dialogue cues, Larkin’s demeanor and way of presenting the dialogue in his first scene immediately sprung all the red flags of the kind of character he was playing and it is a testament to the acting that, with so few scenes, Larkin stole the show and created a truly terrible but realistic character.

Every actor, in my opinion, owned their roles with a mix of realism and understanding of what kind of person they were. With Emma Semani seldom seen without perfect make-up or an abundance of accessories, and consistently either slouched or distracted, exemplifying the apathy of her character, Anna, and that’s not even mentioning her use of tone and expressions to always show exactly what her character is thinking. Both Emilie Robson and Catarina Arteaga as Hannah and Ruth, respectively, use their posture and expressions to show their character’s engagement in what is being said, as well as using their surroundings to inform what their character would be like, from Arteaga choosing to whisper when in a public place, as Ruth would do, and Robson talking loudly when in the same situation. Arteaga perfectly exemplifies the most innocent of the characters with her child-like expressions and the confidence in her voice when her character jumps to ensure they are involved. Robson carries her character through the play with determination, perfectly encapsulating how Hannah begins on the warpath and refuses to give up throughout, and even at the character’s lowest moments, Robson understands that Hannah would not be the one to scurry with their tail between their legs, as Robson displays the fire and fury in every action committed and every word said. While Rose Sharkey portrays her character of the student-journalist Courtney with duality, showing the kind and interested friendly façade over the cunning and manipulative opportunistic side underneath with a very convincing manner that, on second viewing, is seen seeping into one another, so does Emmanuel Sonuga play his character of Connor with a similar duality, having the calm and empathetic face starting the play slowly crack and transform into the morally superior but still well-intending personality that could be found in only hints at the start, which then breaks into a confused and dejected man after the self-revelation of where his own weaknesses led him. Sonuga plays his character close to his chest for the most part, but in the few moments he snaps, the actor brings the full force of the character’s core values into the forefront without directly stating them, creating an nuanced performance that naturally progressed from reassuring to unnerving to heart-breaking.

I personally found the greatest flaw in “Bubble” is how it used the format of a social media messenger to show the story. At first, with the names appearing at the side and the footage of the students seeming like they were recording through their phones or computers, I thought the site they were using was a facetiming or video calling site like Zoom or Messenger video call. However, as names were appearing and disappearing all the time, it was very unclear who was present at any one time and who could see what.  As it went on, I found certain ways they spoke to be strange and infuriating; they were talking out loud like one would text, saying acronyms and slang that people don’t say in real life, and so I found that odd, and it took until about a third of the way through for it to click for me that this was all happening in text form and having the characters say them out loud was just a technique being employed. This did explain another annoying issue I found, that being the use of emojis jumping onto the screen, with the reality being that these are being used in their text messages, but it didn’t explain some of the glitchy video effects being used (it was clear that it was used to sync up the footage during production but in-universe it did not make sense), as I could see how that could represent the texts or would make sense since the students weren’t actually being filmed, that the video was rather showing them as they were texting with the technique of having them saying it out loud too. Furthermore, since there isn’t a concrete visualisation of what is happening, it becomes hard to follow at times. For example, very early in, a character appears alone and speaks, and this represents them sending a direct message to someone, but then, with that same character still on screen, it leads us to believe the next person is sending a direct message to a different character, and the first character responds to this, making it unclear if this was direct messages as connotated by language used or if this was a group chat, and then, without the characters leaving the screen, it seems to switch into the main student group chat. However that is only an interpretation as this play also seems to employ the use of news articles and posting on timelines and segments from the university website, without the format of the play changing in the slightest, making it extremely difficult to follow. This very strongly affected my enjoyment of the play at first, making me think very unfavourably of it for the first half as it all felt jarring with little to give it cohesion, however the story itself was the saving grace. I believe if “Bubble” attempted a format more akin to the 2018 movie “Searching” where each platform being used and method of using it is clear.

In conclusion, “Bubble” by Kieran Hurley is a masterful piece of political theatre updated for our time both in context and format, that unleashes the ethical issues of our society in a well-paced and naturalistic plot full of diverse views and nuanced acting. By creating such a balanced set of characters, “Bubble” never takes a side and instead has the character’s motivations and backgrounds create natural conflict escalating the situation into events that take inspiration from real-life contemporary incidents, creating a harrowingly realistic portrayal of values and consequences in a way that deconstructs the faults in them all and yet leaves the audience with a clear but subtle understanding of right and wrong. This play presents a global theatrical debate that draws the audience in and asks them to evaluate their own stances in these issues, as well as educating them on the realities of modern politics and escalations. With some difficulty presented in the visual format of the play, the overall work still holds up as play that is easy to watch again and again, and I would highly recommend anyone who is politically minded to watch this play, especially during these lockdown times.

“Bubble” created by Theatre Uncut and written by Kieran Hurley can be streamed online or read via download here: https://www.theatreuncut.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR2LTSEMk2yD73hCS1LKhhRZaRockeCEJh1N8AQ1idjErCmgDWu5uBIwniA