Four minutes and Twelve seconds

I watched Four Minutes and Twelve Seconds at the Trafalgar Studios and give it a 3.5/5 rating.

Superbly contemporary, the story line is too obvious and yet too real. It's so obvious that the suspense is not really a suspense but then again you wish it wasn't too obvious because we invent fiction to make us feel like better human beings. You hope for the mother's sake that her son didn't do anything wrong. Then, you hope the mother would call the cops on her son for mistreating his girlfriend. Then you hope the wife would give up her husband's indiscriminate act of uploading the video online because he was proud of his son. You hope the girl gets justice. But it doesn't happen.
Everyone calls the girl a liar because she is poor and not polished enough. Everyone believes the boy because he is economically better and scores well in exams. His parents protect his future and hold their marriage together for his sake. And the girl gets on with her life as best as she can, not that she had much to begin with.

What's hard to digest is that you can take this story and set it pretty much anywhere in the world and practically any time in the past and it fits. The use of technology m makes it contemporary and relatable but the story itself would be contemporary anytime and anywhere because technology has changed but people haven't. If anything, technology has become a tool for the bad as much as the good in the society.

The space at Trafalgar Studios is awfully small. The stage is a smallish square and you have people sitting in 3-4 rows on three sides of it, the fourth side being the entry and exit for actors. The cozy space makes it impossibly real as well. But on second thought, I suppose the ticket was way too expensive for such a tiny space, even though it was cheaper than most west end theatres.