15 Minutes of Shame | Playground 2 at ZOO Playground (Ed Fringe)

The online attention economy is a volatile landscape. Careers can be launched or come crashing down overnight, a space where fortunes can be made and lives irrevocably broken. Yet, the focus of media on the breakout superstars glamorises over the cracks, bringing a steady stream of hopefuls in like moths to the burner.

15 Minutes of Shame brings a spotlight to one such reality, a young nameless couple just one bad day away from a financial crash. She’s slowly curating her digital lifestyle influencing community, frustrated by the ever-fickle algorithm while feeling the pressure to show her fans a life she doesn’t have. He’s barely keeping his head above the water, trying to gain experience and move up in the world. After the rug gets pulled out from under them and with no safety net, she’s forced to start an OnlyFans, trying to keep things on her terms while the world keeps pulling away the layers and demanding their lives contort to match its expectations.

Writer Sean Stillmaker has done his research, with the minutiae of what makes it takes to make a creator delivered in cut-away monologues and expository dialogue. Ellen Pallant and Anton Bibby both bring a depth to their roles, bringing us into this precariously balanced world and the characters’ slow transformations as the attention economy strips away their boundaries and forces them to dance to the money’s tune. The power imbalances between creator and consumer are well explored, especially the indelible mark that intimate or sex-adjacent content can leave on any creator in that space and the differing expectations that gender brings.

Director Adébayo Bolaji has done a good job of keeping the plot focused on these points, exploring the consequences of the characters’ choices and the heavy hands they’re dealt without slipping into parable.

The show’s refusal to cut away or give its characters an easy out gives an extra depth to its points, playing out the consequences of their decisions on both their lives and their outlooks. It’s a drama that’ll sit with you, and deserves its place at the table and your watchlist.

15 Minutes of Shame plays at 19:20 at Playground 2 at ZOO Playground - tickets and more information can be found here.

★★★★☆ (4*)

Gifted tickets in return for an honest review