When CCTV shows all but the truth – This Blighted Star debut
- Amanda Burden
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
This Blighted Star, written and performed by Alfie Jones, Directed by Alice Harding and produced by Sam Pout. See It First programme – Belgrade Theatre/ The Jag, Belgrade Theatre, July 26
Review by Amanda Burden
In our screen-saturated age, the grainy flicker of CCTV camera footage has taken on a weird cultural power. We are the stars of the films, captured mid-yawn at a bus stop or striding down the pavement, mid-mundane minutiae of life. But sometimes these fleeting images take on new significance.
Here is Coventry, who can forget the woman nonchalantly dropping a cat into a wheelie bin? Or the octogenarian mobility scooter menace careering through West Orchards like a deranged bumper car? And on an even darker note, what happens when the camera captures the finality of someone’s last moments before they vanish from view forever?
This is the unsettling premise of This Blighted Star, the haunting one-man show making its debut ahead of the Edinburgh Festival. At its centre is a CCTV operator (Alfie Jones) who becomes consumed by a sequence of footage from a city street in the early hours, where his childhood friend and murder victim is caught on screen moments before his death.The images loop on a projection screen, repeating as the protagonist pores compulsively over each frame. There’s a kiss. A scuffle. A pause. And then he’s gone.What has he seen? And what is he walking into? These questions gnaw fixedly at us through the eyes of the operator, as we witness his descent from professional curiosity into all-consuming obsession, before he finally solves the mystery.
But this is no film noir detective drama. Interwoven with the central narrative is the compelling subplot as the protagonist cares for his mother with dementia. He behaviour becomes increasingly unpredictable, mirroring his inner turmoil, and the two storylines reflect and amplify each other. His own surveillance tools are turned against him as her behaviour is reported to the authorities, blurring the boundary between clarity and confusion.
There is more than a hint of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime in the unravelling of a mystery through the lens of an outsider, while the emphasis on filmed evidence and the theme of isolation speaks of this year’s hit TV show Adolescence.
As a concept, This Blighted Star taps the zeitgeist, laser pinpointing our moral panic about constant surveillance and technology. The production itself may be a little rough around the edges, but this is only to be expected from a warm-up performance. While the visuals effectively do a lot of the heavy lifting – in a good way – I’d personally lose the interpretative dance section towards the end. But that’s just me.
The Belgrade’s new venue, The Jag – former home of the notorious basement club The Jaguar – is absolutely perfect for this show, bare concrete walls and minimal décor perfectly mirroring the stark sparsity of the set and storyline. Overall this is an unnerving and moving show, a powerful discourse on loss, memory and the permanence of the digital footprint we leave behind.
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