The Nether presents a ‘genuinely disturbing’ vision of the near future

A play dealing with the consequences of virtual reality, The Nether was a hit at last year’s Vancouver Fringe Festival. This month, local company Redcurrant Collective is bringing back the daring, thought-provoking piece for a run at the Firehall Arts Centre (280 E. Cordova St.) Jan. 18-28.

Set in the near future, the play posits a world where the Internet has morphed into a vast network of virtual reality realms. Investigating one of these realms, The Hideaway, a detective the realm’s creator in for interrogation.

In its review of the Fringe production, plankmagazine.com said “The Nether is a delightfully textured piece about catharsis, crime and how to navigate ethics and morality when reality isn’t reality any more. It will make you feel — disgust, temptation, anger, shock, love, sympathy, sadness, horror and pleasure; perhaps all at once — and it will make you think.”

TheatreMania named The Nether one of its “Nine Best Off-Broadway Shows of 2015,” and said that it features “one of the most unnerving love triangles ever to grace the New York stage.” And the New Yorker called the script, by L.A.-based playwright Jennifer Haley, “genuinely disturbing,” and said that it “lives in the same neighbourhood as David Lynch, David Cronenberg and George Saunders.”

Produced by Redcurrant Collective, The Nether features David Bloom, Lissa Neptuno, Linden Banks, Julia Siedlanowska, and Douglas Ennenberg. Visit firehallartscentre.ca for more info and tickets (starting at $23).

And, for those interested in seeing more speculative-fiction type of shows onstage, Upintheair Theatre presents its adaptation of British sci-fi author China Miéville’s novel The City and the City onstage with the PuSh Festival, Jan 26-Feb 5. To find out more about this world premiere production, visit pushfestival.ca.

Article source: http://www.insidevancouver.ca/2017/01/13/the-nether-firehall-arts-centre-vancouver-2017/