Kevin Kautzman gets our palms sweating in this intense new play.
Moderation, a new two-hander by American playwright Kevin Kautzman, brings the woes of the internet to the Hope Theatre. The action takes place in a pre-Orwellian corporate world, where social media content moderators trawl through conspiracy theories, anti-semitic rants, and snuff films. Robbie Curran is the neurotic supervisor of the new kid, played by Alice Victoria Winslow, who is still learning the ropes of the grim profession. Like a Beckettian pair, they trudge through their dismal lot while still finding room for mundane conversation and the odd dad joke during their strictly-timed break periods.
It’s a very current work in the age of disinformation and AI. The play quite neatly emphasises the untameable lawlessness of the internet while never getting too preachy. Kautzman’s work speaks to the blurring between the lived social realm and the conspiratorial online realm of forums and social-media. The dialogue is dotted with internet jargon, favouring ‘lol’ over ‘laugh’, ‘headsick’ over ‘mentally ill’. At times this works for this blurred world that Kautzman is building, but wears thin as the action progresses — ‘can we talk like real people?’ Winslow begs, amen sister. The lighter dialogue reads like an awkward sitcom, but as tempers flare and tensions arise, Moderation becomes a thrilling piece of palm-sweat-inducing theatre.
At times the mounting pressure feels inescapable and oppressive in the confines of the Hope Theatre. We can’t turn away from the HR violations or detailed descriptions of beheadings in the desert. When Curran begins to go off the rails we feel held hostage, his mask slipping further until we can barely bring ourselves to look at him. Though his obsessive nature reveals itself in a sometimes too excessive manner (hallucinations et al.), Kautzman still manages to write a discomforting edgelord that never veers too far from being believable. One recalls the recent case of murderer Nicholas Prosper, who’s self-taped manifesto has made headlines this week after his sentencing. Curran’s characterisation brims with an incel’s faux-confidence and combative nihilism, a great villain.
Lydia Parker’s direction is never gratuitous or violent, she allows a very real tension to build between Curran and Winslow. Where the production really soars is the tension — ‘hell is other people’, and sometimes ‘other people’ are your colleagues. Winslow is particularly brilliant, suffocating in her cubicle, trying to detach herself from her work while climbing the corporate ladder. She’s assured in a role that demands great elasticity, at one moment she’s kicking her feet up, at another she’s barking orders to command respect from Curran. When his antics get to be too much to handle, we find ourselves crumpling with her, rooting for her escape.
Art’s dialogue with the internet these days tends to be either chiding or catastrophising, and Moderation does occasionally take from the Black Mirror playbook of ‘phone = bad’. However, Kautzman’s interest in the psyche within this world paired with Parker’s emphasis on human connection make for a gripping piece of theatre. Phone may = bad, but people are worse.