Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Static Lives
Two Parachutes
Genre: Drama, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: TheSpaceUK
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
Engrossing and disturbing, Static Lives peers inside the minds of young men trying to cope with a never-ending onslaught of violent online content. The characters’ emotional numbness is presented with sensitivity and nuance and is sure to make you think deeply about this important subject.
Review
At the start of Static Lives, Ben (Alex Braglewicz) is in the flat of his friend Adam (Luke Ward), trying to convince him to go out clubbing. Unbeknownst to him, Adam has just seen a live-streamed death as part of his job creating algorithms to monitor and filter out such social media content. It isn’t that Adam was upset by it – he’s upset that he wasn’t upset.
And so begins a night of episodic conversation between the friends about empathy exhaustion, punctuated by drinking, fighting, dancing, and lashings of realistic casual misogyny. Nothing is solved by daybreak, but neither of them is in the same place at which he began the evening.
This new writing by Ward and Braglewicz asks what exposure to violent and depraved online content is doing to the next generation of young men. They paint a bleak and at times frightening picture, but it’s an important investigation and one they do well.
The script manages to present two diametrically opposite viewpoints without shorting either on sympathy or complexity, and this accomplishment keeps audience interest and carries the story. One plot point is problematic: at the height of the friends’ conflict, Ben takes an action that comes off as out of character and forced. Adam does challenge him, but Ben’s response doesn’t quite make sense, and muddles our understanding of him in ways that were perhaps unintended by the playwrights. For the most part, though, the writing is impressively taut.
The audience’s experience is deliberately made uncomfortable – very much so! – by blasts of staticky noise and loud music, as well as the entirely monochromatic set. Adam and Ben intersperse the scenes with jerky, frenetic dances that are pure post-teenage angst, and are used to particularly good effect in creating a kind of physical montage of their boozy night out. Adam’s T-shirt, reading “Honestly, I couldn’t care any less,” is perhaps a little too on the nose, but otherwise, this is terrific staging that amplifies both mood and storyline.
The young men’s acting is convincing, though with Braglewicz’s delivery a little rushed in their initial banter. Their painful inner struggles are conveyed with sincerity and emotional weight.
The conclusion might feel like a bit of a dodge, though it seems unfair to require these young playwrights to present a solution to a global social issue that’s only just beginning to receive serious attention. The questions they raise are sure to spark post-performance discussion – see it with a friend – and remain in your mind long afterwards. And perhaps, as Adam muses toward the end, that’s enough.
