We’ve all had ter­ri­ble Zoom calls over lock­down. Night­mar­ish ones, per­haps. How­ev­er, they’ve nev­er been quite as dead­ly as this.

Trick of the Light The­atre’s (via Cir­ca The­atre) work It’s Behind You! is a piece of dig­i­tal the­atre born out of the COVID-19 lock­down. First per­formed live online on 28 May, and avail­able until 30 July 2020 to watch online, this work brings togeth­er four friends on a tem­pes­tu­ous Zoom call, and the mon­ster that’s stalk­ing them.

Chris (Chris Park­er) is def­i­nite­ly not break­ing lock­down rules, Andrew (Andrew Pat­ter­son) is trapped in his house with Simon (Simon Leary) who is very attached to him, and Car­rie (Car­rie Green) is just home from her essen­tial work as a clown doc­tor. Over twen­ty-five min­utes, the friends ban­ter, argue, and point fin­gers at each oth­er for break­ing the lock­down rules — then, inevitably, get killed by a mon­ster (Bryn­ley Stent). It’s behind you, indeed.

The per­for­mances are very strong and fun, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that the whole thing was done live. While all these per­form­ers are stage actors, there’s anoth­er lev­el to dig­i­tal the­atre — the fact that the inter­net often breaks for no rea­son  — and per­form­ing live whilst hav­ing to be con­scious of film­ing one­self, as well as deal­ing with oth­er tech issues per­son­al­ly is quite the feat. A show like this feels odd­ly inti­mate too, as the audi­ence we’re right in with the action, riff­ing with the friends, poten­tial­ly the mon­ster’s next prey. The entire piece is very slick and well-made, and def­i­nite­ly is a fan­tas­tic exam­ple of what future dig­i­tal work could be.

How­ev­er, I won­der if this work could­n’t have come a lit­tle ear­li­er in our lock­down. I’m very aware of the intense tech­no­log­i­cal under­tak­ing it would have tak­en — and it was very impres­sive­ly done — but the piece does­n’t quite fit our Lev­el 2 sta­tus right now. It’s the sort of work that could stand as a cul­tur­al mark­er — a sign of our times, as it were — and would have been very scary had it been played dur­ing Lev­el 4, but it does­n’t quite have the same ring to it now that we’re all most­ly free to leave our hous­es and see each oth­er in per­son.

Regard­ing that, though, the show itself is very fun — albeit per­haps not some­thing that will age espe­cial­ly well — and def­i­nite­ly worth check­ing out online.

Buy your tick­ets to view the show here!