Eight gigabytes of hardcore pornography

The set says it all. Separate spaces not much larger than a grave plot; two venetian blinds (from which to view the world or hide our secret selves) evoke the confessional; a shared space mediated by a grid of computer components. This is how we live. Alone, rarely together and mostly in the ether. Pared of the commodities which insulate, the characters are stripped bare, naked as they came into the world and naked as they will leave it.

Heath Brown’s audio design contributes intelligently to the whole. Excellent performances are augmented by the soundscape of the digital age, the pings, hums and smiley emoticons which punctuate daily communication.

Eight gigabytes of hardcore pornography is simultaneously humorous and bleak. Greene has created characters whom we can pity as pathetic until the moment of cringe-worthy laughter when we identify the insecurity, loneliness and desperation of this pair of misfit protagonists as our own. Ultimately, Eight Gigabytes turns the spotlight onto ourselves and the deception we perpetuate to maintain the public and private versions of who we are.

Jane Hamilton-Foster and Matthew Stolp give accomplished performances as two deeply flawed individuals who are pitiable, repulsive and recognisable. Stolp’s is the less redeeming character of the two yet he engenders his character with likable warmth. What endears in both is interminable hope in the face of soul destroying circumstances, in which nothing is more soul destroying than internet dating. The Hamilton-Foster character, in her dating profile, asserts her willingness to “do things that hurt me” until she becomes accustomed to them. To stoop so far in a desperate desire for connection is horrifying but identifiable. The audience laughs and squirms and sees themselves reflected.

Eight gigabytes of hardcore pornography is not a particularly hopeful piece. The characters, at the conclusion of the action, remain much as they were at the beginning, overfed on reality television and consumerism and incapable of change. 

Anne Blythe-Cooper