Jennifer Haley’s The Nether was one of the most talked about new plays of 2014. Strike that; it was one of the most talked about productions, new or old, musical or otherwise, of 2014.
A crime thriller exploring the goings-on of an Internet-location where all your dreams can be fulfilled no matter how they would be viewed in a physical world, it set tongues wagging and minds whirring as it delved into the darkest recesses of humanity, asking the most awkward and pertinent of questions.
Its impact during its Royal Court run was such that a West End transfer was secured. With it comes most of the original cast, including Stanley Townsend and Amanda Hale.
In a draughty, sparse rehearsal room, with a score of road works and screeching brakes, the pair, who face off against each other as the proprietor of the dubious wish-fulfilment cyberspace and the investigating officer, met Official London Theatre to discuss this much-lauded production and its much-anticipated transfer.
Townsend, whose voice rumbles like the just heard echoes of a London Tube beneath your feet, and Hale, wearing a bright red bobble hat knitted “by New York hipsters”, chatted to us about the pull of the play, its effect on their views and creating giant virtual versions of themselves.
How did you react when you first read the script?
Townsend: I suppose I found it really shocking and terrifying. It’s a very different experience to read the script than it is to see the show. I found it very very tough reading. I found it very challenging. The thought of engaging with the subject matter. How do you research that? Do you research that? I was afraid of it, I thought it was brilliant, so then obviously I had to do it.
Hale: I don’t remember honestly what my reaction to it was. I can’t remember.
Townsend: Were you not shocked at all by it?
Hale: I thought the questions it posed were really interesting. How do you gauge morality if one thinks the arena you’re playing in is not real? That was interesting. I can’t pin it down most of the time. It’s like music. It’s like if you hear a song and you want to dance to it or not [laughs.] That’s how unintellectual I am.
Did you research it?
Townsend: I was very fortunate and brilliantly supported by the Royal Court team. I stuck to the text and everything that they brought to me. They brought in some brilliant people to talk to us. It’s very important when you’re playing a character not to judge the character. I knew that if I did too much research, inevitably I would start to judge. Actually, to research in any detail about it could have sent me off down the wrong track.
Hale: I just found it really useful to build up an idea of what state the world would be in when we’ve got to the point where we’ve got no trees. Trying to figure out how The Nether can exist parallel to the world where there’s no natural resources left anymore. Trying to make that believable.
How did you find listening to those outside experts?
Hale: It’s kind of mind-bending. The possibilities just expanded as you were listening to them. It was terrifying and depressing but also exciting and hopeful in lots of ways. There’s this book of photos of people with their online avatars. There’s examples in that of how gaming and the Internet can be used in ways that are so freeing for people who don’t have that chance in the real world. There was a photo of a guy who’s profoundly disabled. He’s got no limbs. He has to breathe through apparatus. His avatar is… *BOOM*. He says online no-one knows who he is, no-one judges him, he’s just another gamer. It’s given him a second life. Things like that are really exciting. It’s like anything, you can focus on the things that drag us all down, but you just have to hope that there’s enough of the other side. That was what stopped me from jumping off a bridge.
Townsend: The writing is brilliant. It’s fantastically tightly written. It deals with the subject of avatars and it manifests avatars on the stage. As actors, that’s fantastic. It’s a new kind of thing. We as actors pretend to be other people, but now that person is behind an avatar, so there’s all sorts of other opportunities for play then, within that.
How was the first time you performed on Es Devlin and Luke Halls’ design?
Hale: I’m so jealous because I never get to be in it. I get a sh***y little interrogation room [laughs]. My favourite bit of the show is at the very end when my scene is done, I walk off stage and during the last scene I get to waggle the scenery to make the wind. If they try and take that away from me… Sometimes in rehearsal you feel like you don’t want to leave the rehearsal room because you’ve made this little world and you really believe in it. I always knew in rehearsals that the main character missing from it was Es’ design.
Townsend: Luke came into the rehearsal room and he scanned us all. He was doing extraordinary things like making these wire frames and animating them. It was completely mind-blowing.
Hale: I got really offended. I thought “My eyes are not that close together.” He said “That’s what the data says.” It’s like a terrible photograph of you blown up eight times a week in front of an audience.
Townsend: And animated.
How do you find facing off against each other in the interrogation scenes?
Hale: It’s like getting into a boxing ring each night.
Townsend: I’m incredibly combative.
Hale: And at the same time, we completely need each other. If one of us fell down in those scenes…
Townsend: So you’re co-dependent and fighting. But we also have a hug that we do that’s really important. It’s odd because there’s a kind of intimacy in it as well, between the characters, not just us as players. The characters, the hunter and the hunted, they’re very close.
Have your views changed during the course of rehearsal and performance?
Hale: They have. There was an article in the paper the other day; a photo journalist went to a village in Florida called Miracle Village. It was set up by a Christian pastor for sex offenders after they’ve served their time. She was saying “They have to have a place to go, isn’t it time that we just forgive them and live together?” I think before The Nether I would have thought “Yeah maybe”, but now that’s not good enough. It’s not a solution to say “Shouldn’t we just forgive?” How do we live together? This is the whole problem. No-one’s addressing the before and the after. If I had a five-year-old child and I lived near that village I would have a problem with that. It’s made me a lot more impatient with woolly arguments. The whole problem is at the moment if a young man feels like he may have paedophilic tendencies, there’s nowhere for him to go. The awareness of that is such a huge thing. There’s an epidemic of cases we hear of every day. All we’re doing is the shock and horror and repulsion of it, rather than addressing it. There’s no “Why?”
Townsend: The taboo is dangerous. It’s a lot more prevalent than any of us realise. We have to address it. We must discuss. We must bring it out into the open and we must provide social mechanisms for society to cope with this phenomenon. Doing this play in the West End hopefully inflames this debate and it’s a debate we have to have.
How are you feeling about the West End transfer?
Hale: It stunned me that a play like this was going to be in the West End. They were talking about it last year. I just thought “Whatever”.
Townsend: Sonia Friedman said her experience of going to see the show was she found herself waiting around outside the theatre and there were 50 or 60 people like her just waiting and not wanting to leave the place where the show had been because it felt so different. That feeling was a big part of why she wanted to put the show on [at the Duke of York’s Theatre]. It has potential to talk to an awful lot of people. It is going to thrill, compel. There are four or five good, old-fashioned reveals in it. It is such a modern play that deals with technology, to have that old-fashioned technique of a reveal is great. It’s a wonderful and compelling and entertaining and deeply disturbing piece of theatre. If we can make that work in the West End and it’s a new play, that’s a lifetime’s ambition achieved, isn’t it?
The Nether is running at the Duke of York’s Theatre until 25 April. You can book tickets though us here.