Edinburgh Fringe: Going Viral - Theatre review: A captivating and illuminating look at how emotions are transmitted online

Northern Stage at Summerhall

Going Viral promo pictures (Alex Brenner)

Throwing the dual and very salient meanings of the word ‘viral’ at this stage of the 21st century together and seeing what comes back might suggest a rather pat concept for a show, but Teesside writer and performer Daniel Bye manages to instead coax them into the same orbit with subtlety and wit.

This solo show is both a captivating and at times illuminating insight into the science behind infection - deconstructing the more hysterical voices of the media when covering, say, the Ebola crisis – and a meditation on how this relates to “going viral” in the contemporary sense; how ideas and emotions are transmitted online.

He tells of and plays a young man returning from the furthest rural reaches of Africa, who leaves behind him a trail of people crying uncontrollably - #weepers, as Twitter names them. Yet he can’t cry, and when his neighbour discovers his role in the outbreak she tweets his picture and he becomes hunted, particularly by a young, female Indian doctor.

Amidst this Bye, clear and professorial, explains how disease works using liquorice allsorts and a little clever interactivity, and fosters a sense that nothing spreads quite like paranoia.