I Love You Bro

Based on real events in Greater Manchester in 2003, I Love You Bro is a dark, disquieting tale of sexual fixation and the enormous power of the internet as a tool of deception. The story was originally brought to light in a Vanity Fair article, and this year's Fringe adaptation represents only a small part of the true events which astonished police officers and judges.

Told in panted monologue and with an omnipresent grin, the talented Ash Flanders delivers a script couched in chat-room neologisms with a morbid vigour that suggests bigger things to come for the young actor. A projected pastel backdrop that shifts as the tale unfolds does much to effectively conjure the malleable online world that Johnny inhabits. The portentous air of foreboding is intensified by frequent allusions to Romeo and Juliet, with snapshots of a hellish domestic life permitting glimpses of a human dimension to the protagonist's warped mind. The brief moments of tittered relief are, more truthfully, valves for nervous tension as the play becomes increasingly macabre and Johnny's deceit plumbs new depths of manipulation and sadism.

As the narrative unfolds and Johnny begins to flirt with a psychosis beyond erotic obsession, fictive personas are killed off and his victim becomes embroiled in a finale so horribly ruinous that the audience leaves the theatre stupefied and mute. A fervent production from the deservedly lauded Three To A Room theatre company, this is powerful, gripping theatre at its best.