📍Greenwich Theatre, London

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Despite my phone not audibly ringing for the last ten years (I wouldn’t even be able to hum you a single note of my ringtone), it is a constant anxiety throughout any theatre experience: Is my phone on silent? Have I turned off all my alarms? A little voice in the back of my head making me doubt the three times I’ve checked that my phone is in fact: off. In some ways, it is something that brings a theatre community together – the disapproving glances when someone’s phone does spring in to an upbeat chiming chorus, inevitably during the emotional climax of a show.

From the outset, it is obvious that Overshare is not your average show. For one, this shared anxiety about phones is dealt with immediately: You are actively encouraged to keep your phone on, to take photos throughout, and even to interact with the actor in role by sending messages and reacting to the action on stage as it unfolds. Not only this, from the promotional wall in the Greenwich Theatre foyer, it is also perhaps not the best show to take Grandma to: pinned to the board are condoms and wrappers, toilet rolls and Parental Advisory warning stickers. Anticipation = successfully built.

Writer and performer Eleanor Hill has written this solo semi-autobiographical piece as a clever examination of our relationship with social media and the part it plays in our mental health. Despite the lone character remaining unnamed throughout, we receive an intimate insight into her life. She is thirty, living at home with her dad, struggling to cope with the unending grief of losing her mother at a young age, and her (married) boyfriend Mark is a massive tool. Set in her bedroom, the entirety of the play (written as extended monologue) is delivered to her phone as a livestreamed video – which is projected on a wall behind the bed. Throughout Overshare you can choose to absorb the play through the livestreamed video, or directly through Eleanor Hill’s on stage presence. Either way, we watch as her mental health suffers through ups and downs through some brilliantly raw writing. For such dark topic matters Overshare is hilarious, relatable and then at times completely gut wrenching.

Overshare is clever for many reasons. Hill’s fast-paced, irreverent dialogue immediately endears her as a character as she tackles difficult subjects with wit and charm. Her approach to displaying the struggles of mental health lies much more in what is not said – the audience are able to connect the dots and the results feel refreshingly authentic. By filtering the action through social media livestream (pun not intended) the audience become voyeurs, a subversion of theatre used powerfully in moments such as when Hill switches from speaking to the camera/audience and suddenly accuses them of watching her pain. An uncomfortable truth is laid bare as the camera is abruptly turned onto the audience for our faces to project onto the video wall. The use of video in theatre is a far from groundbreaking concept, but here is it used with such a pressing purpose; it is never a gimmick but instead highlights our own toxic consumption of social media. In a very British turn of events, hardly a punter’s phone made an appearance throughout the play on the evening I attended, and I would’ve loved to see how this added another dimension to the piece, but even without this, it is such an innovative piece of theatre.

Overshare plays at the Greenwich Theatre studio until 25th May

🎟️ Tickets and information: https://greenwichtheatre.org.uk/events/overshare/