Brighton Fringe 2025
Low Down
“Mae is an online erotica writer at the peak of her fame. Lily is a reader who once found safety between the lines—until the fiction changed. When Mae is detained for reposting an anonymous testimony of sexual assault, she insists it was “fiction—or someone else’s truth. But the platform’s algorithms, the police’s questions, and a reader’s voice begin to fold into one.
Review
This theatre piece opens in a dark, windowed, padded interrogation room. A writer has been reported for producing obscene writing online.
Like cardstock not properly folded, our lives are precarious and can fall easily. The metaphor becomes a through-line throughout this touching and sometimes harrowing piece of theatre.
This is a cleverly crafted story. A piece about writing, paper-based and online, an exploration of how the writer’s hunger for commercial success can have unintended consequences on our readers.
The play poses many interesting questions. When crimes are perpetrated, what can be worse, the crime itself, or the lack of certainty around whether those we love were knowing onlookers or simply absent and ignorant? What is the line between autistic literature, smut, and porn?
Simple staging and some simple lighting support this intense drama. There are plenty of moments of tension, and physical theatre is well used to explore some of the more emotional dynamics and that line between real and virtual.
Censorship is well examined and played out through the interrogation of the writer, who is on trial for ultimately doing the right thing morally. The script is well crafted into an accessible narrative which allows the story to be told but also the emotional depth to come through.
Physical mask work combined with some appropriate musical backdrop is in places both beautiful and disturbing. Sexual abuse is handled skilfully as a theme, with respect and credibility, particularly in the writing of the script.
An inventive piece of theatre, we are taken into a world that will be revealing and stirring for many in the audience here in the UK, drawing parallels with some of our own censorship and the injustices that occur when people make moral choices about what can be expressed publicly and artistically, as well as the moral and practical compromises artists have to make in order to reach the mainstream and even earn a living as artists. When do we say no to the pressures put on us, and what can the devastating consequences of those compromises be in our audiences? What might seem to be minor compromises and changes to the artist can have unintended effects on those who access our work for their own personal reasons and needs.
Both actors work with energetic commitment. There is, however, an inconsistency between one actor who largely relies on naturalism and another who becomes too melodramatic and stagy. There is scope here to iron out this difference and make a decision in order to create a more coherent delivery style or to make the contrasting style more clearly intentional. Vocal clarity also needs some attention, both in live and recorded sections, as does the music balance, which at times overpowers the spoken word. A tightening of the movement work would help elevate what is already a compelling theatrical language.
Where this production truly excels is in its ability to slow down and let the material speak for itself. There are moments of great courage when the silence is allowed to settle, where the metaphorical and the literal blur in ways that are moving and quietly disturbing. The metaphor of cardstock, strong yet vulnerable, is beautifully rendered, and the production holds this tension with intelligence and care.
This promising new company deals with difficult material with deftness and unhurried poise. Overall, this is a daring piece of work: in its subject matter, its moral inquiry, and in the integrity of its delivery. Cardstock shows what theatre can do when it chooses not to look away.
