Poison, Hate & Vitriol – VAULT Festival, Waterloo

Reviewer: Christine Stanton

Writer: Amy Guyler

Director: Vikesh Godhwani

“Passionate, Heated & Venomous”

3 / 5

~This review was originally written for The Reviews Hub ~

Left wing journalist Jaz is tired of his articles for the Guardian being dismissed, struggling to make his mark with a front page byline. Wife Kelly had a glittering career producing documentaries for Panorama, until she got pregnant with their first child. Both feeling displaced, they come up with an idea to grab the control back, spark conversation and go viral – by creating Sharon, an online right-wing account designed to rile up the masses and cause controversy.

Unless Katie Hopkins is your beacon of truth and you’d class yourself as one of Andrew Tate’s number one fans – Amy Guyler’s script can be an uncomfortable listen. As the characters take their hateful online persona up a notch, the transphobic, racist, misogynistic tweets become hard to hear. While it’s a scathing insight into online trolls and right-wing ideology, at points in the narrative the audience are hit with the Daily Mail comment section a bit too strongly.

Anish Roy (Jaz) and Tiffany Clare (Kelly/Sharon) brilliantly portray their characters, easily showcasing the breakdown of their marriage and the shift in power as the storyline progresses. Both are intended to be intentionally unlikeable, their flaws under the spotlight for the entirety of the show with only a small glimpse into any redeeming features of their personalities. This hardened deliverance of the couple allows the audience to fully immerse themselves against them, which makes their passionate, heated and venomous fake persona outlooks hold weight.

Director Vikesh Godhwani keeps each scene fast-paced and engaging. Brightly coloured toys are strewn across the room, bursts of light and sound are enforced whenever their child needs attention, automatically detracting away from Sharon’s storyline and into their roles as parents, an interesting contrast that further contributes to the slow collapse of their marriage.

While social media, televised debates and news articles are dominated with shock pieces and controversial comments, Poison, Hate & Vitriol shows how quickly hate speech can spread and how easily unfavourable Piers Morgan types can get into the spotlight. But aside from the surface storyline, this is also an interesting confrontation of gender roles, parenthood and feeling like an outsider.

Runs until 5 March 2023