Camden Fringe 2024

I bought a flip phone

Panos Kandunias

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fringe Theatre, New Writing

Venue: The Couetyard

Festival: Camden Fringe

Low Down

Review

‘I bought a flip phone’ is not only the title of the play, but also the first and second line Charlie utters. He is about to turn 27 and for an out gay man that is a bit of a disaster. His quarter-life crisis is seemlessly rolling into his third-life crisis. However, the fact that he has bought a flip phone, quite recently, maybe suggests he is closer to getting on top of things than he thinks. Charlie has realised that people live through their phones, including himself, so he tries to get away from his mobile.

New to T9 he struggles to organise his birthday party. There is one person he really wants to be there. His bestest forever friend Phoebe. Only, she has moved back home and her home is 300km away in Leeds. It’s impossible to have a chinwag with a mate if the quickest route is a two and a half hour train journey. Without Phoebe, Charlie feels a bit lost. He feels alone.  

As the play unfolds we realise he is not as alone as he feels. There are actually people in his life who genuinely care about him and look out for him. Yet, he can’t feel it. He fails to connect to people. Charlie knows he is not alone in this. People live and seek attention through their phone. Every post they make is ultimately nothing else but a tag saying: ‘I was here’. While a world far away sees and maybe envies this, what the poster fails is to connect to the now. Charlie notices this clearly at a concert. The singer strides on stage and the phones go up before the first note is sung. All Charlie sees is a sea of phone screens. People watch their lives through the lense of their phone. He comments on tourists going into the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa and instead of letting themselves be captured by the effect the painting has close-ish up, they snap a picture on their phones. They are in the presence of greatness and don’t even look at it. All they see is their phone. It is a sobering thought, which Charlie immediately cuts through with a joke: “It’s like going to a brothel and saying; ‘you make a cup of tea love, I’ll have a wank'”.

He tries to fill his life with hobbies. He loved football as a kid, but being gay he was bullied. To avoid that, he applied to join a gay football team. He also likes dancing and started to make his own pasta, even experimenting with shapes. It is fun but not fulfilling. He is missing something and that something is like Schiller puts it in Don Carlos: ‘a fellow human being’. 

Charlie has realised that his low mood is caused by FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). And he has FOMO because he scrolls eternally on the phone. He sees what life could be like, or at least that’s what is suggested to him. He seemingly forgets that content is curated. What he sees is not real. It is scripted, filtered, edited and stressed over with the aim to trick people into interaction with the post. One thing it certainly is not: real life.  

So he got a flip phone, hoping it would ground him a bit more and connect him again to real people. Phoebe texts occasionally, but she doesn’t seem to understand his struggle. To him she is oblivious and he feels betrayed. He was always there for her and she is not there for him. Now, she can’t even come to his birthday party as she is already engaged. This is the last straw. Charlie is so upset he has written her an email telling her how he feels. It just takes forever to write a long text on a flip phone.

The person who messages him a lot is his mum. She tries to reach out but somehow it doesn’t feel right for Charlie. She is constantly checking on him and he feels it is a bit of overkill. He doesn’t realise mum is genuinely worried and is inviting him to open up to her. He misses a good quality conversation, but he has lost or maybe never had the ability to start one. He expects others to provide for his emotional needs without clearly communicating what they are. He doesn’t realise it is this standoffishness that isolates him.

Charlie self-sabotages a lot. Not only by being too full on when communicating with a crush, who approached him in real life as he proudly proclaims, but also at work. The corporate world is full of people whose whole existence is based on putting others down. One day Charlie has enough of this and gives back and gets the sack. He is also skiving off because he can’t face working out his notice. The company is not stupid and just tell him to stay away.  

In this bleak moment some positives arrive. The gay football team his brother has located and suggested he contacts, invites him to play with them. Phoebe has read his email and calls him back. She didn’t realise he was feeling like that. She is 185 miles away and can’t guess. Unless he opens up to her she can’t help. She will try to come to his birthday. He also lets his mum, who tells him how special he is, back into his life.  

He realises he has tried to live someone else’s life and self-excluded because somehow he convinced himself this or that is not for him. Sometimes, without even trying. He vows to not let that happen again. If he wants to stop feeling lonely, he has to allow new people into his life. Promptly, Charlie invites us to his birthday party.

Kandunias has created a very introspective work. It is hilarious for much of the duration, but has some very somber moments, acknowledging some home truths on how social media affects us and affects us negatively. Especially his generation who hasn’t known anything else. It is also something that cuts deep between the generation. I, a juvenile GenXer, could relate to my grandparents’ childhood far more than that of my geriatric millennial friends, who are only five years older. Not everything that is new is necessarily better and not everything that shines is gold. This brave work confronts this issue head on. 

The writing is crisp and polished and Kandunias is an accomplished actor. While I am sure some of Charlie’s characteristics are his, I am certain many elements are taken from observing his friends and associates. 

This is the third run of this play and it deserves a bigger audience, especially a younger audience. It is ultimately their story, but they are probably too busy scrolling on their phones. 

When Kandunias asks us to follow him on twitter/X or Instagram, the irony is not lost on him. He only created the account in January, when he was strongly advised by others that he needs it for his show. 

During the performance I was often reminded of German Kabarett. Most people think Kabarett is what is depicted in the Kander musical called Cabaret, however Kabarett is in general a solo show, but can have more performers and mixes comedy, storytelling, impersonations, sketches and fairly regularly also music. It often holds up a mirror to society or tells truth to power. Kandunias casual narrative style and acknowledgement, even involvement of the audience feels very much in this tradition. It also feels fresh and honest. He comes across as a secure performer who deals confidently with cues going wrong or the audience not quite behaving as expected. It is really a very funny show. The audience laughed a lot, even this reviewer, who is not one for laughing out loud. I highly recommend this show.

Published August 15, 2024 by Tamara Stein