Written by Liam Arnold for Theatre and Tonic

Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review. All views are our own

Georgie Dettmer's professional debut arrives at the Royal Court with the confidence of a playwright far further into her career. Are You Watching? is an ambitious, unsettling and frequently brilliant examination of voyeurism, sexual violence and the uneasy relationship between spectatorship and complicity in the digital age. At just over an hour, it is relentless in both form and subject matter, leaving audiences with little room to breathe and even less room to escape the questions it poses.

Structured as a mosaic of over fifty rapid-fire scenes, the play moves between intersecting stories of online exploitation, deepfakes, pornography, missing persons cases and mediated violence. Episodic theatre can often feel fragmented or self-conscious, but Dettmer largely avoids that trap. While not every thread lands with equal force, the cumulative effect is striking. Rather than building towards a singular revelation, the play accrues meaning through repetition, juxtaposition and escalation, mirroring the endless scroll of contemporary digital life.

What is most impressive is Dettmer's refusal to offer easy answers. The play is not interested in delivering a thesis on technology or morality. Instead, it inhabits the murky territory between witnessing and consuming, asking what it means to observe suffering through a screen and whether repeated exposure erodes our capacity for empathy. The recurring references to the Gisèle Pelicot case provide a disturbing backbone to the evening, but Dettmer is less interested in the specifics of any one crime than in the culture that enables us to absorb such horrors alongside memes, celebrity gossip and advertisements.

Jess Edwards' production understands the importance of pace. Scenes arrive and disappear with forensic precision, punctuated by flashes of light and XANA's deeply unsettling soundscape. The production's sonic world is one of its greatest achievements. Shutter clicks, intrusive blasts of noise and fragments of recorded intimacy create a constant sense of unease, as though the audience itself is being observed. The effect is immersive without ever feeling gimmicky, amplifying the play's themes while maintaining an almost unbearable tension throughout.

Georgia Wilmot's traverse set is equally effective. A clinical, white-tiled runway evokes everything from a swimming pool to a laboratory, a space of both exposure and scrutiny. The design cleverly transforms over the course of the evening, becoming increasingly stained by the violence and trauma discussed upon it. Combined with the mirrored surfaces above, the audience is repeatedly confronted with its own reflection, a visual reminder that the play's central question is directed as much at us as at its characters.

The six-strong ensemble delivers exceptional work. Multi-rolling across a vast array of characters, they shift seamlessly between humour, vulnerability and horror. Abby McCann and Kosar Ali provide the emotional anchor as two schoolgirls processing the disturbing material they consume online, while Lucy McCormick, Maimuna Memon and the rest of the cast navigate Dettmer's tonal shifts with remarkable assurance. There is an admirable lack of sentimentality in the performances; moments of anguish are rarely underlined, allowing the audience to arrive at discomfort independently.

If the production has a weakness, it lies in its occasional reliance on theatrical ingenuity that feels more demonstrative than revelatory. Certain visual motifs and recurring stylistic flourishes begin to announce themselves a little too loudly, drawing attention to the mechanics of the production rather than deepening its ideas. Likewise, a handful of storylines feel truncated just as they become most compelling, creating the sense that some characters are serving arguments rather than fully realised dramatic journeys.

Yet these are relatively minor reservations within a work of considerable intelligence and ambition. Dettmer has written a play that captures something genuinely difficult to articulate: the strange coexistence of horror, fascination, empathy and numbness that defines modern spectatorship. It is not always comfortable, nor is it intended to be. Instead, Are You Watching? asks audiences to confront the implications of looking, and the consequences of continuing to look away.

Disturbing, provocative and formally assured, this is an impressive debut from a playwright with a distinctive voice and a production that lingers long after its final image.

Are You Watching? Is playing at Royal Court Theatre Upstairs until 4th July

★★★★

The Latest