Breaking News @ Summerhall

In the age of Twitter, the 24 hour cable news cycle and hoards of reporters camping outside a hospital for weeks on end in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a newborn baby, it’s easy to get caught up in the rush of breaking news. This show, Breaking News, from the National Theatre of Iceland and visual theatre company VaVaVoom, seeks to explore our relationship with how we consume the news and the effect it has on our psyche.

Performers S. Sunna Reynisdóttir and Irena Stratieva operate everything that unfolds on stage – often at the same time – including the protagonist, a faceless red dressing gown, who wakes up every morning eager to get its fix of the news through any route possible. The pair display some seriously spot on timing through their puppetry skills, filling the boneless lead with such personality that you soon forget it’s merely a piece of clothing being operated by two women in black. The sheer inventiveness on display is evident from the offset, with creative use of newspapers, pop-ups and even Venetian blinds to startling and often unsettling effect.

Breaking News is a piece more concerned with feeling than plot, and as such does feel disjointed and a touch overlong in places, even though overall it only clocks in at 50 minutes. It’s clear that the group know their stuff and are incredibly talented but the points they try to make don’t really land, nor do they seem to understand that the world of news has changed dramatically in the past few years. While the protagonist must deal with the news programmes and, rather inexplicably, the internet ending for the evening, nowadays such things operate 24/7 around the globe. An exploration of how the world consumes and deals with the oversaturation of information and sensationalised media cannot work without all these details. Fortunately, the issue of the consumption of news leading to the random citizen becoming the reporter is touched upon (a growing issue in today’s Twitter trending topics world), but once again the points made are shallow.

VaVaVoom are an immensely talented and imaginative group, and their exquisitely crafted props and set are almost worth the admission price alone. A tighter script with a heavier focus on substance over style will help them with their future endeavours, but in the meantime, at least the style of Breaking News is stunning.