, US writer Lindsey Ferrentino’s debut at London’s National Theatre, is more than just a survivor story. It’s a visually arresting meditation on virtual reality exposure therapy.
The therapy was first trialled in 1997 by at the University of Washington Human Interface Lab in Seattle. The pair designed a virtual reality environment, Spiderworld, which enabled a phobic individual to safely encounter and interact with the object of their irrational fear – in this case, a 3D-rendered arachnid. After 12Ěýsessions, the subject’s symptoms seemed to have disappeared.
A few years later, Hoffman and his team developed , a virtual antarctic landscape complete with snowball-flinging snowmen and frolicking penguins. As whimsical as it might seem, its purpose was serious: to ease the experience of pain suffered by burn victims and others in extreme, chronic discomfort. And, once again, it seemed to help. Patients immersed in SnowWorld reported a reduction in pain of more than 30 per centĚý– more effective than a dose of morphine.
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The National Theatre has been investing heavily in VR in recent years, culminating in the opening of its in-house in 2016. Hidden from public view in a network of storage containers in the car park of the National Theatre’s Studio, it’s a digital playground for theatre makers to carry out their own experiments into crafting narratives and environments to be experienced by audiences in VR.
Enter Indhu Rubasingham’s production of Ugly Lies The BoneĚý– the story of Jess, a smart ex-teacher turned soldier returning to her sleepy Florida town after a catastrophic tour of duty in Afghanistan. After an explosive device blew up beneath her, her skin is a patchwork of painful grafts and scar tissue, she is barely mobile and she lives in constant pain.
In an unnamed lab, an unseen therapist takes Jess into a kind of SnowWorld of her own, built to her own specifications, and gamified to provide a sensory distraction from pain responses, as well as something to strive for. A mountain to climb. As Jess’s return to civilian life throws up disappointment after disappointment, she invests more and more time and emotional energy on this virtual paradise, this world where she can walk, run and climb without pain.
The VR element, realised through projection rather than individual headsets, is both the most intriguing and developed element of Ugly Lies The Bone. Thanks to a spectacular video design from Luke Halls, frozen landscapes, aerial city shots and nerve-shredding flashbacks to the war in Afghanistan are brought to life with pixel-perfect clarity.
The question of the efficacy and long-term therapeutic goal of exposure therapy are fascinating, though Ferrentino’s script never quite grapples them to the ground. Therapy sessions are interspersed with vignettes from Jess’s life back home, and though there is a pleasing contrast between the gleaming snow-capped peaks of the simulation, and the drab convenience stores and ugly home decor of Jess’s hometown, the result is that the VR sequences are often left to bookend a far more conventional and occasionally shallow homecoming drama.
Jess is played with a sardonic wit pulled taut over red raw emotion by Kate Fleetwood, but other characters tend towards stereotypes. Olivia Darnley finds little to do as Jess’s bubbly sister Kacie, and though Ralf Little and Kris Marshall play likeable enough buffoons as Jess’s dozy ex and Kacie’s equally dozy current boyfriend, they both feel sketchy and ill-defined.
The setting, the dying town of Titusville on Florida’s “Space Coast”, throws up some smart questions about the decline of the space programme and its implications. The town once prospered under the thunder of shuttle launches. Now it’s almost dried up, as the US turned its attention away from the stars to the oil fields, stoking war zones in the Middle East. In a play centred half on the potential of escape into brave new worlds, and half on the shrunken life Jess now faces, the irony is palpable.
It looks gorgeous, too. A grey concave bowl peppered with toy-town grey buildings – a typically spectacular set from Es DevlinĚý– suggests that Titusville has collapsed into a sinkhole or a crater, with Jess stranded at the bottom. A bomb blast, petrified in the moment of detonation.
At its most fearless – as Jess struggles into a blue dress, whimpering in pain, trying to distract herself by humming a happy tune – and at its most interrogatory – as Jess hovers on the brink of VR addiction – Ugly Lies The Bone is a work of real power. But its grip on the real world, on its characters and the deeper implications of its narrative, is tenuous. Ugly never quite matches the flawless fidelity of its immersive visuals.
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