The Sum Of It All

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The Sum of It All simply does not live up to its hype. Making the disappointment even harder to handle is that it begins with higher aims, with its contemporary use of multimedia projection and video screens which fragment the graphic (computer-game meets cartoonish) backdrop of the play. Projections onto a white veil and into a glass jar are ethereally beautiful and inventive. Such ideas are clearly the reason Shorten has been heralded as such a talent in previous years.

The success of the projections as part of the narrative does require perfect timing from the two actors performing the play, however. This is where the disappointment begins. This physical theatre performance is immediately let down by the protagonist's lack of coordination and synchronicity with the technology employed and with his co-star. In what were meant to be its "nobody puts baby in the corner" moments we see an embarrassing amount of underwear and leg-flailing.

Additionally poorly executed is the dialogue – when it can be heard above the otherwise evocative sound recordings. Teeming with cliché, only the lines taken from other writers lend the script any poignancy (from Shakespeare to Damien Rice, all the greats are in there). It sets itself up as a profound play about the banality of a man's unsuccessful life. It convey this idea well, but not as the cast intended.