Ballistic @ Pleasance Courtyard
Ballistic's focus on a mass shooting is bold but unconvincing in its portrayal of one young man's descent into hatred and violence
Mini Mall Theatre Company’s decision to make a play about a troubled young man who commits a mass shooting in a college is undoubtedly a bold move. Ballistic, a solo-show featuring an admirable performance from Mark Conway, certainly does its best to get it right, but doesn’t quite do justice to its immensely sensitive subject matter.
The staging is simple but effective, with a set, lighting and sound-effects inspired by classic video-games that turn from innocent to threatening in the blink of an eye. The script gets off to a promising start, with a good mix of humour and poignancy in conveying our anti-hero’s early years and his charmingly relatable growing-pains. However, his transformation from bewildered young romantic to raging misogynist happens too abruptly and without sufficient explanation. The play focuses on the divorce of his parents, a series of humiliations at the hands of his peers, and his immersion in online gaming communities as the sole catalysts for the young man’s descent into hatred and violence, and while these narratives are well-executed, they reinforce the insubstantial “sad loner” trope that so often dominates the conversation around male violence without interrogating the wider societal conditions that play a role in radicalising young men.
There is some commentary on the dangerous rhetoric of men’s rights activist groups, but this ultimately gets lost in the adrenalin-fuelled pace of the play. All in all, Ballistic makes a decent attempt at responding to one of our most disturbing cultural phenomena, but it still has a lot of work to do before it can really be considered successful in doing so.
Ballistic, Pleasance This, until 28 Aug, 2.15pm, £12-10