FringeReview UK 2026
Are You Watching?
Royal Court
Genre: Contemporary, Drama, Feminist Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Everyone’s lives seem tainted, marred, threatened. Georgie Dettmer’s debut play Are You Watching? is directed at the Royal Court Upstairs by Jess Edwards till July 4.
Georgie Dettmer’s voice should be one of the leading dramatists of resistance. Yet more, Dettmer has already much to say about how to live now and next.
Review
The title invites complicity with a kind of audience-shaming. Two girls on bunk-beds challenge each other with films they’ve come across and sought on the net. But threaded throughout are revelations, and others emerge emmeshed in stories behind or common to those films. Everyone’s lives seem tainted, marred, threatened with an editor’s knife. Georgie Dettmer’s blazing debut play Are You Watching? is directed at the Royal Court Upstairs by Jess Edwards till July 4.
Though this is her debut, Dettmer’s play Attempts on a Birch Tree won the Bloomsbury New Wave Award, with another Ordinary Sex, longlisted for the Bruntwood. Themes of the latter inform Are You Watching?
The first Girl, Kosar Ali tells of a Gisele Pelicot-type narrative where one man decides he can’t go through with raping an unconscious woman. The second, Abby McCann, goads the first with more and seems the more transgressive. Ali’s Girl 1 though tells Girl 2 she must watch all the videos in sequence, rehearsing some imagined rulebook that others actually live by.
As four other multi-roling actors spin or spool out other worlds, all intercutting with each other like the two anchoring Girls, it becomes clearer those two share experiences generated by other storylines; or several witness the same video.
As narratives around those violated becomes progressively darker, attempts are made to recruit or corrupt the victims. And AI giants can use the law to persecute. 52 scenes intercut narratives: all develop towards the Omega-point where perhaps the two Girls are ultimate consumers and arbiters.
There’s Lucy McCormick’s Star actor finding herself objectified and exposed by AI, with agent Nicholas Rowe both reassuring then excusing media tech Billy Bolt’s leakage of footage. At one point the Star’s narrative crosses the Mother, also McCormick, terrified at her missing child. Bolt’s media manipulator attached to the police pushes boundaries where life becomes grief-porn and acting in itself, directing the correct vulnerability; and in turn vulnerable to media hate. Ultimately the argument that a blonde daughter has become a fascist meme against asylum-seekers is weaponised against the Mother.
Maimuna Memon, a police liaison officer over the disappeared child is also a Journalist with McCormick and Rowe prepared to pay her £5,000 for undergoing arousal tests by watching various films with legs hoisted up and intrusively wired. There’s a sequence of videos and she’s agreed to it. Memon’s character reaches a horrified limit but then is told something about herself she doesn’t believe.
A slow-build from the first moments show a slither of peace, as Rowe and McCormick enjoy a middle-class fresh coffee to birdsong. But there’s health issues the wife’s discovered. Rowe’s also Bolt’s Father in a slow reveal of a different violation. Ali’s Creator and Bolt’s Boy circle each other as Ali demands certain conditions, in the process discovering more of each other. Memon’s Girlfriend proposes a filming to Bolt’s Boyfriend that initially seems roleplay but cuts at a crucial moment.
Georgia Wilmot’s white-tiled trough of a set (the reasons behind the tiling become even clearer at the end) lit by Bethany Gupwell with snappy red scene-changes, are reinforced by a growl of XANA’s sinister soundscape.
Over 70 minutes Dettmer’s intercut narratives echo the way film’s cut, indeed her directions include “Cut” at the end of each scene, abruptly shifting to the next, with often the same actor shifting accents with role, notably McCormick. The cast is quite exceptionally hard-working. Particularly the four multi-roling who bring instant characterisation in a beat.
Dettmer’s superbly-directed fury at a range of recent violations seem to have vectored the extraordinary final image. It’s clearly informed by Pelicot, AI objectification, theft and persecution, far-right appropriation of victims and (as she reveals in a Royal Court podcast with Lucy Prebble), Gaza. Normally you’d want to cheer at a final storyline narrated by Ali and McCann; but that spectacle and the foregoing mute this response. Perhaps the cold fury advocated by the far-right might be repurposed.
Dettmer’s range of targets and their targets naturally don’t allow for in-depth characterisation. Yet the Churchill-like dance and retreat of stories create a momentum both clear and compelling: you know a conclusion brushes most. But these might unsettle and don’t always resolve. A phenomenally ambitious scale and debut, this is a must-see but also a landmark. It’s an arresting, jagged play: as if we witnessed a retro-celluloid splicer sliced against its own material. Dettmer’s voice should be one of the leading dramatists of a resistance we desperately need. Yet more, Dettmer has already much to say about how to live now and next.
Dramaturg Gillian Greer, Casting Director Saffeya Shebli, Intimacy Co-ordinator Joana Nastari, Fight Director Jonathan Holby, Assistant Director Yanni Ng.
Production Manager Daniel Steward, Costume Supervisor Christian Tomei, Company Manager Mica Taylor, Stage Manager Katie Bachtler, DSM Kanoko Shimizu, Stage Supervisor Steve Evans, Lighting Supervisor Izzy Hobby, Lighting Programmer Lizzie Skellett.
Set Build Royal Court Stage Department, Wellbeing Support The Artist Wellbeing Company (Tricia Gannon), Lead Producer Hannah Lyall, Executive Producer Steven Atkinson.
