It is by no means perfect, but once its gets over its own strident determination to be different there is something fascinating about this doomed cyber-romance. Walking into the theatre feels as if you have been transported to a virtual world, inhabited by Curtis, a young man who spends his life at screens and online creating perfect fantasy women. This is a disappointment to his single father, Dave, who would like his son to be a real Jack the Lad. So Dave engineers a meeting between Curtis and a young prostitute called Joi, hoping to get his son involved in the real world.
This is not a play in any traditional sense, more a collaboration between writer Kaite O'Reilly, designer Paul Clay and director John E McGrath. There are times when it feels as if they are all trying too hard to get their voices heard, and there are times when the evening is so full of screens, video monitors, music and live action that you simply don't know where to look, and feel like lying down quietly in a darkened room.
By the interval, Perfect feels disastrously flawed, but in the second half the show suddenly finds its way, and integrates the technology fully into the narrative rather than merely using it as a flashy add-on. It actually starts to serve the storytelling, and the show blossoms from being just a collection of ideas into a real examination of fantasy and reality and the dead-end that is parenthood if all you want to see from your children is an improved version of yourself.
This show won't please anyone in search of a well-made play, but the Exchange and Library offer plenty of that in Manchester, leaving the way clear for Contact to continue its quest to tell stories in new ways to new audiences.
· Until May 15. Box office: 0161-274 0600.
