"Hello World" by Oliver Binns.

 "Hello World" by Oliver Binns.

Nottingham New Theatre online.

The first show in NNT's Autumn online season is ‘Hello World’ by Oliver Binns which premieres at 7:30pm on Wednesday 18th November on the NNT Youtube channel and I have been lucky enough to see the production before hand.

I have never been one of those technical people, I can just about work a computer and download stuff, so I can confess that I am by no means a techie type person, so some of the terminology went over my head, That didn't matter and it kept me watching to the end credits. Some of the online pieces I have seen over the last eight months, for me, have not worked, but here is a piece that works very well online, and I can't really see this type of production working on stage. Not as good as it worked online because the technical imagery was made for the online format. Not saying it wouldn't work live on stage but I think it would provide the technical team a few headaches. Meet Zero/One. Two, although they appear as characters, could be shapes, symbols, pieces of cheese, the images could have depicted anything. We see Zero and One develop from the basic form to a super intelligent pair, often opposing each other but also in agreement. It is like eavesdropping on a pair of bots, if bots have conversations with each other. Who knows, there is nothing to say they don't! And that is the wonder of this piece of work, we don't know and that opens up a world of magic and imagination as to what these computerised "things" look and sound like. It also highlights the fact that Oliver has included a great deal of technical knowledge into this story, and I am always a fan of intelligent scripts that do not aim to be overly intelligent, but comes across as a natural intelligence. We see in the twenty-five and a half minute piece of theatre the growth of computer-ware and this is visually presented as well as in the script. You'll see exactly how this is done by watching it on Wednesday night at 7.30pm. I love some of the comparisons used, especially in the simile that "intelligence is like a tube of Pringles" and also the part where Zero/One are "inventing words" in the same way that Shakespeare did. Well that could well be the case! Although there is loads of technical terminology it does not swamp and the feel is light and enjoyable, and even educational to someone like me who thought a hard drive was finding my way out of Birmingham's one way system during road works. Mimi Clay (Zero) and Amelia Hackett (One) made the job look the easiest acting job ever and laid themselves open to all the wonderful visual technical wizardry of the video editors (James Appleby and Skylar Turnbull Hurd). Skylar also did the captioning. Written and Directed by Oliver Binns, assisted in the Direction department by Abraham Botha. Produced by Nicholas Landon and some fun work with the sound design by Anna Schooling, who also composed the music for this piece. I know how hard everyone works at NNT so I also like to mention as many people as I can. Publicity Assistant - Abraham Botha Poster Designer - Caetano Capurro Creative Assistant - Tobi Bambi Graphic Designer - James Appleby Graphic Designer - Caetano Capurro ‘Hello World’ by Oliver Binns premieres at 7:30pm on Wednesday 18th November on the NNT Youtube channel.