Eight Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography

By Olivia Gardner

On a cool night in July I ventured through Northbridge and into the State Theatre. Down the stairs to the underground foyer I was met with a large group of likeminded people talking quietly amongst themselves. We were waiting in anticipation before it was time for us to crowd into a room together to sit in silence and watch Eight Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography.

Adult themes and nudity were a given, but in all honesty, I had no idea what to expect. The stage was simplistic, lit in fuschia, a man and a woman paced over a shag hair carpet as two chairs sat side by side at centre stage. As the lights in the auditorium dimmed, the story that unfolded was indisputably compelling.

Steve Rodgers played a depressing and vile fat man who loves himself and masturbating and hates his wife. Andrea Gibbs played a single mother with a crippling debt with and an online shopping addiction. They meet through an online dating website “oh god she’s ugly” he says to himself. “Oh god he’s fat” she reflects before they greet each other for an uncomfortable and inevitably boozy first date. He wakes up in her apartment, she has gone to work. He remembers little and cares less. He doesn’t return her calls.

Later, as the complexities of their lives unravel they are forced back together; he loses his job from being caught having downloaded eight gigabytes of hard-core pornography and leaves his wife. He shows up at her door, she lets him stay with her because she is afraid of her debt, her ex-partner and being alone. Just as they’re on the brink of breaking through to one another, he leaves without a word.

The characters are expertly performed and the dialogue has enough smatterings of dark humour to propel the audience’s engagement with such an abrasive concoction of themes. While the characters are at once repulsive they are equally as endearing and the performance manages to draw parables with the audience and allow some retrospection. All in all it was a shocking and unusual, yet profound engagement.

A Perth Theatre Company production, written by Declan Greene and directed by Lee Lewis.