Influencers, celebrities, politicians… and the end of the world as we know it
Imaginary Friends
at the Burton Taylor Studio, Oxford
on Wednesday, April 16 and Thursday 17
Review by JON LEWIS
The End of the World As We Know It
Daniel Bye’s latest solo show Imaginary Friends includes caricatures of influencers, celebrities and politicians that Bye’s on-stage version of himself meets as he falls down a rabbit hole induced by grief. Bye magnifies their behaviour by placing them in a world which, because of Bye’s own utterances on the future of AI, is coming to an end.
Bye promises us after only a few minutes that all comedy will stop from that moment on, but he does not keep his word. No matter how bizarre and miserable the content, he infuses his narrative with satirical, often deadpan, humour. The catalyst for Bye’s fantastical ride into a sort of brain-fever is the death of his brother Sam, a man for whom it was virtuous to be positive. A running image in the production is that of a predatory cat slowly stalking a bird. Bye suggests that people find watching the cruelty of nature compulsive, and in contrast to what his brother would have done, identifies guiltily with the cat and not the bird.
As in previous solo plays, Bye radiates his interest in science. He quotes research published in the New Scientist that if a person in the street looks up at a building, 80 per cent of other passers by will join in the activity. Now, Bye has already warned the audience that not everything in the show is true or real (a get-out clause also used by Shōn Dale-Jones in his shows The Duke and Cracking). The leap into the world of the imagination is confirmed when it emerges that there’s a person on the roof of the building who is threatening to jump off, and that person is the outspoken journalist Piers Morgan.
At the heart of the play is the poetic truth that grief is painful. Bye has lost someone close to him and creating a performative work of fiction acts as a form of therapy.
Contemporary concerns about the malign influence of online and on-television peddlers of hatred, misogyny and political discord are aired, and Bye articulates these worries with his use of satire. It’s a potent brew.
