What I liked
The music and lyrics are a stand out, with clever word play and strong melodies. The energetic, fun choreography fits the different musical styles, and was adapted well to the space limitations of the venue and skill level of the ensemble. A fun cast with good energy.
The unique staging, a running social media feed matched to each song is a stand out. At times it is too distracting, temporarily taking us away from the characters, but you can’t help but watch it (just like your actual feed). These technical elements are complex and impressive. It would be amazing to see what could be accomplished with a larger budget and venue.
The main characters are flawed and real. None are 100 percent right or 100 percent wrong in their thoughts and actions. They all make bad choices due to temporary emotional states, misguided altruism, narcissism, and plain old stupidity, and ultimately they all have to deal with the consequences of their choices.
I liked that the target of the internet harassment is given a voice. This character’s monologue allows us to really understand the immediate and long term impact public shaming has on an individual. It makes you think twice about the what cruel and unusual punishment really means, especially in the realm of ever changing social contracts.
What I didn't like
A few of the jokes could be reworked. It was hard to hear some members of the ensemble who didn’t have a microphone. The ensemble, while generally enthusiastic and energetic, may benefit from a few casting changes. The main female character was hard to sympathize with at times and seemed to lack chemistry with the main male character.
My overall impression
Narsociety – The Social Media Shaming Musical, takes you on a hilarious, toe-tapping, poignant, realistic, and at times uncomfortable ride through the trending world of social media and its collateral damage. It brings front and center the ugly side of social media, particularly our society’s penchant for making mountains out of peccadilloes.
It is not for the humor impaired.
As you journey with Carlos and Sadie through the ups and downs of a burgeoning romance now made public, you will laugh (maybe nervously) at the tame and the shame of our online reality: selfies, hashtags, food and pet photos, relationship status changes, over-sharing, passive aggressive malcontents, trolling, political correctness, mob mentality bullying, public shaming, and apologies without integrity. You may squirm at times because the characters and themes hit a little too close to home.
At its heart, Narsociety is delightfully poking fun at our social media obsessed culture while also making an important statement about social media’s dark side. We are all narcissistic to a degree, and we all make poor choices that in hindsight we wish we didn’t. Sadly, in the hands of internet vigilantes, private innocuous actions become public without permission and are taken wildly out of context, resulting in individuals being personally and professionally compromised. Forgiveness and compassion are lost to demonizing and outrage. Social media has allowed us to take bullying to a whole other level, verging on tyranny as individuals are verbally beaten into submission, and coerced to confess and apologize with little thought given to the aftermath.
