The Nether is a dirty, disturbing look into online fantasies

The Nether

HuM Theatre
Esplanade Theatre Studio
July 8, 7.30pm

It is difficult to leave the voyeuristic universe of The Nether without feeling disturbed, if not outrightly dirty. A self-professed paedophile is questioned by a tough inspector about his role in the real-life murder of a young girl, but he has no qualms arguing he has his depraved desires under control and is therefore innocent.

Except his argument proves difficult to swallow. He claims self-mastery in the real world because he has created a virtual pleasure palace known as the Hideaway, where fleshy avatars of underage girls – controlled by anonymous users of legal age – act out paedophilic fantasies and axe-wielding fetishes. No real children are harmed, he assures, in this world of treacherous images and virtual release.

So unfolds American playwright Jennifer Haley’s compellingly perverse crime fiction, set in the year 2045, which premiered in 2013 like an episode of Black Mirror, but has advanced so much closer to mere realism in 2026. HuM Theatre’s affecting rendition swops Haley’s American references for Singaporean ones, timely as the Republic’s Online Safety Commission began operations on June 29.

Stage veteran Subin Subaiah brings rich moral ambiguities to an imperious character otherwise easily dismissed as depraved. In his hands, the character Ravi Chandran – virtually known as Papa – offers some unsettling philosophical provocations for the willing listener. Can virtual life be a valve for an uncontrollable urge? Does the virtual private network of fantasies exist in the realm of private life, or must one reckon with a fantasy’s social consequences?

Feminists have long asked such questions of pornography, and the question of whether certain genres of pornography are liberatory or injurious remains fraught. The first problem that besets every new technology, Papa raises, is always pornography – and Haley gives the question an even more charged valence in her world of sensuous avatars not easily distinguished from real life.

Sharda Harrison holds her own as the inspector Rachel Fernandez – with her own complicated backstory – who campaigns on the basis that seemingly private actions have societal harms. Hers is a counterpoint to Papa’s in a play that is less whodunnit and more a duel between moral frames. The nine-year-old child avatar character Iris is sometimes played by child actors in other stagings, but is played here by 20-something Janine Ng, whose coquettish giggles and frame convince audiences to feel nervous in intimate scenes.

Director Yogesh Tadwalkar brings cohesive world-building into his Singaporean Nether. Together with his set designers from Studio Vagabond and lighting designer Alberta Wileo, the world is bifurcated into two colour-coded realities – a brash, brutalist grey for the real world and a kind of neon kawaii in the virtual world. Too bad the axe prop wielded onstage looks a little cartoonish.

The audience cannot help but be implicated as voyeur – after all, a large red light looms over the set like an all-seeing surveillance camera. The Nether is not an easy watch. But as virtual – and, increasingly, deepfaked – existence gobbles up contemporary life, the play’s conundrums about where to draw the lines around harm, consent and fantasy are more urgent than ever.

Book It/The Nether

Where: Esplanade Theatre Studio, 1 Esplanade Drive
When: Till July 12, 7.30pm (weekdays); 3pm and 7.30pm (weekends)
Admission: $60 (eligible for SG Culture Pass credits)
Info: str.sg/N4hB