I Love You, Bro | Reviews

Edinburgh Fringe Festival: 'I Love You, Bro'. Review by DM for FringeReview

Wow. Strap yourself in for this one. It’s a white knuckle ride into the (true) dark side of teenage web chat fantasy, played with terrific, feral intensity by the alarmingly talented Ash Flanders. This dark, claustrophobic and almost unbearably tense hour is written by Adam Cass. It started life as a film script, based on the true story of a teenage boy from a small town near Manchester in 2003 becoming embroiled in an online love affair, which ended in him manipulating and deceiving the object of his online affection into trying to murder him.

This monologue is a revelation; for those of us old and stupid enough to have never really bothered with the chatroom phenomenon (this reviewer doesn’t even belong to facebook), it is a fascinating look at the subculture and terminology of chatrooms, and is a convincing expose of the dangers to be found therein, especially for confused, emotionally disturbed teenagers. The quality of the writing is first class, and driven with a kind of urgent, obsessive vernacular that quickly fleshes out the subject, Johnny, before plunging us headlong into his vortex of online love, and the furious invention of shifting identities and events that he uses to ensnare his unwitting, credulous lover.

The audience, too, is manipulated, swung between sympathy for Johnny’s desperate love, and disgust at the length s to which he will go to deceive Mark, the football playing golden boy who arouses his passions. The staging is spare, with computer generated backdrops playing over Johnny’s face or framing his lithe, awkward body as it twists in the rising agony of his despair, becoming slowly trapped in the arabesques of his plotting and obsession.

A real psychological thriller, Flanders and Cass together create the online characters real and imagined so well that, like Johnny, the audience starts to forget that there is only one person there. A monologue, yet truly an utterly successful, vital piece of true theatre. Go see.

Monash preview season: 'I Love You, Bro'. Review by JOHN BAILEY for RealTime.

Here’s a curious counter-example: Three to a Room’s upcoming Edinburgh tour of Adam JA Cass’ 'I Love You, Bro'. It’s a genuinely stunning monologue in itself, earning acclaim for playwright Cass and performer Ash Flanders when staged in last year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival. It traces the true story of a 14-year-old English boy whose obsessive search for human interaction through online chatrooms led to his stabbing in a dank alley, a police investigation unveiling a vast web of lies and intricate role-play, and a court conviction for inciting his own murder. There is an “I” in alienation, apparently.

A thrilling story aside, what makes this tour so interesting is in the way that Three to a Room—a company of three young theatremakers—have taken this small production, along with Sisters Grimm’s equally fringe cult schlock-fest 'Mommie and the Minister', and pushed them all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe. It’s not that they’re adapting these works. They’re doing something oddly rare in the independent theatre scene—producing. Having already toured their own productions to Edinburgh—the lauded 'An Air Balloon Across Antarctica'—the company this time round has found a pair of pre-existing pieces which deserve further life, and has taken on the job of making the connections between these satellite performances and the solid terrain of Scotland. The business of the independent producer—the forging ties between free-floating creatives and established institutions—has been one of the more exciting areas of development and discussion in recent years, and the work of small companies such as Three to a Room add an extra layer of activity to the trend.