Wink

A frenzy of Facebook likes, Snapchat photos, sexting and porn make up the blinkered world of the two characters in this smart if improbable new play. The two male protagonists are digitally sociable but personally disconnected.
 
In ‘Wink’, Phoebe Eclair-Powell has created a harshly funny story of modern-day loneliness and male alienation. John is a 27-year-old teacher, who regularly turns up at his school hungover. He’s an unfaithful boyfriend who shamelessly checks his girlfriend’s Facebook profile for signs of infidelity. Seventeen-year-old Mark is one of his pupils. Awkward, and obsessed with porn and his phone, Mark wants what John seems to have: a girlfriend, a sex life, a real home. So using the unlimited opportunity that the internet offers, Mark creates a new identity: someone who begins to chat up John’s girlfriend Claire. But neither Mark nor John really knows who is at the other end of each of their computers.

In its best moments ‘Wink’ demonstrates the internet’s vast, glorious possibility, while exposing its intense one-dimensionality. Both men believe what they are doing electronically constitutes a reality. But the truth is, they can’t even open up to their nearest. Eclair-Powell’s well-written, charged dialogue unwinds their worlds well, offering an expanse of subtle subtext.

Fundamentally, though, it’s just too difficult to believe that a slightly messed-up teenager (Mark is far from a psycho) would go to the lengths he does in the play, without realising that at some point his trick is going to backfire horribly. He’s a bit sad, not a total idiot.

Jamie Jackson’s boldly directed production is infused with evocative, jerky choreography which symbolises the two paralleled internal struggles, and breaks up the staging nicely. Max Pappenheim’s sound design is great – climbing strings, electronic fuzz noise – and it helps no end to build up to the climax. There’s very strong performances too from Leon Williams and Sam Clemmett.

‘Wink’ is mostly an arresting new play, but the inherent cluenessness of its main characters frustratingly undermines the denouement, zapping it of any sense of truthful drama.