I wrote a piece about the innovative production of Hibrow’s entire programme a while ago. The execution of the really cerebral nature of the show was oddly complemented by the contrast of minimalist set design and beautiful video projection on the back wall by video designer, Akhila Krishnan. This show followed an experiment conducted to assess where infidelity and unfaithfulness comes from in relationships. A pair of men and a pair of women were raised from birth not seeing another human face and were released so that each man found a woman with whom to fall in love – or supposed love.

Their only companion in life has been Carisse, a faceless model of a transparent torso with a waveform monitor for a head – the inner wiring of which you could see. Perfectly balanced was the nu-tech Carisse with the other feudal, person-0 characters.

It brought to mind the thoughts of idiosyncracies within us all which are made stagnant by society and our borne-with conceit, senses of aesthetic opinion, worship of our lovers, and jealousy. The experiment was more specifically set out to figure out which ‘cheats’ first, a man or a woman. They threw up into the air the innate stereotypes of each gender – jealousy between women and camaraderie between men.

I made some comparisons between The Dispute and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in terms of narrative and to His Dark Materials in terms of obscurity. The set included a plateau of grass and a square pool for a stream but the backdrop stole the show with the pods from which the characters were released being cut out from the physical backdrop as well as the video projection beamed onto said wall. The performances ranged expertly from fully fledged humans to cowering animals like deer.

Around the room there were three cameras recording and broadcasting the show in HD across the country on BBC Arts and at 200+ Odeon cinemas. One captured a wide of the entire stage, one was live capturing two-shots and close-ups of some characters from one side of the stage, and another doing the same from the other side.

There was no single technological or performance-based glitch that I saw. I found it enriching, thought-provoking, and superb. The Hibrow Hour team’s profundity knows zero bounds whatsoever. I will make sure to catch the rest of the shows online when I leave on Friday seeing as I can remotely and I vehemently advise you to do so, too.