Motion Sickness Review by Matthew Donlan

Motion Sickness is the feeling you get when you scroll too long on social media. It’s the nauseating whiplash of seeing images of a genocide next to an AI ad for pool cleaners next to a red-pilled podcaster next to baby monkeys cuddling a toy. It is hypnotising, confronting and essential.

Writer and director Ben Ashby has meshed the end of the world with our digital age. In three distinct acts, Motion Sickness uses a pulsing electronic synth score, text-based projections and breakneck-speed performances to manifest three distinct theories on how the universe may end; the big rip, the big freeze and the big bounce. Each theory is succinctly explained before its mechanisms are brought to life through sound, visuals and choreography, reaching a visceral simulation you can’t escape from but don’t want to leave.

From behind a circle of curtains in the centre of the stage, lead actor Ethan Morse steps out and immediately grabs your attention. The opening act, mimicking the big rip, is delivered with an increasing freneticism as Morse’s words rattle off from undersea cables to Katy Perry in space. Its intensity is unrelenting as his aggression grows. It’s matched by Asha Barr’s textual designs where layers of text are projected onto Morse and Toby Leman’s synth score thumping underneath it all. His words quite literally consume him and only when he ends can you let yourself breathe.

The show shifts tones expertly to match the energy of the second theory; the big freeze. From harsh white lights to mellow blues and a quieter, calmer score, the audience are now given room to listen and reflect. It is a more honest and sombre segment that captures the empty feeling you get after spending too much time on the internet. It simply and delicately brings to life the technological disconnect and loneliness we experience.

The final theory, the big bounce, brings the energy back, but this time with an even stronger cohesion of elements. It is entrancing to watch the three performers fully commit their bodies to the dance. Turning from a theatre show into a rave, Ethan, Asha and Toby create a cathartic release of frustrated energy for both themselves and the audience. They move like the atoms of the universe, translating the physics of the end of the world into physicality on stage.

Motion Sickness is perhaps the best theatre show I have seen.

It makes you want to scream and cry and kick in frustration with the world. It makes you ask why everything is so intense. Why it feels like the world will end at any moment. Why no one knows what they are doing or why they do it. It demands us to ask why can’t we just dance? And love? And lay on the beach looking up at the stars?

It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel sick.

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Matthew Donlan attended Motion Sickness at New Theatre on Thursday 17 September.