Jessica Burgess’s play is about a naked photograph. It’s about a teenage blunder and an unrelenting consequence. When dropped into the immeasurable and inexorable hands of the internet, a momentary impulse becomes a lifelong trauma. Ten years after boyfriend Matt posts a naked photo of Jodi online, the two meet again for the first time and Jodi, driven to breaking-point by her desire for revenge, reveals the colossal effect his actions have had on her life and threatens him with a similar fate.

It’s the hot topic of the hour: who’s to blame for what’s inside a screen that the whole world sits behind? You’ll have heard the recent stories of ‘revenge porn’: celebrities threatened by hackers intending to release their nude images into the public domain; individuals (predominately women) targeted by ex-partners hoping to get one over on them by sharing their most intimate moments with the entire digital world. Jessica Burgess’s play explores this same revenge, but from another angle. Girlfriend Jodi threatens Matt with a naked photo, however only in retaliation to the one he posted of her a decade before, forcing us to question who the real victim is. Burgess plays around with our sympathies in these two naive and unlikable characters, and a little too haphazardly at points, causing her to lose us somewhat in the jumbled ping-pong morality game that dominates the majority of the play. ‘Consent’, the word we are all waiting for, is thrown in about halfway through the play and we’re introduced to the debate: Jodi didn’t give her permission, “but you’re beautiful, you should be proud of your body”, pleads Matt and that’s about as far as it goes.

Google the name Emma Holton and you’ll find a brave and experimental response to the consent debate. After naked photos of Emma were posted online, she chose to answer by taking her own photos, photos that focused on her not as the object but instead the subject. Emma Holton’s unique response, along with the many other cases still at the forefront of the consent debate, permit Burgess the artistic licence and the safe space to have an opinion, to say something more about the consent she mentions rather than just taking it out for us to look it and then putting it away again.

Glimpses of a politicised agenda are short and sparse and along with the sudden plot shift towards the end of the piece – no detail here to save you from spoilers – means that it becomes difficult to discern what the story is really about.  Is it a didactic piece about the consequences of impulsive teenage behaviour? A fable about the dangers of the internet? A glance into the careless behaviour of male teachers towards their female pupils? A exposure of the human capacity for revenge? An exploration of consent? Whilst a wide-angled lens leaves space for a healthy difference of opinion, this was a piece that could really have benefited from a tighter and more decisive focus. Whilst the narrative remained clear-cut and followed a neat, textbook dramatic structure, it omitted to throw in an opinion on what is clearly a prevalent topic for discussion.

Script-centred morality muddle aside, Jessica Burgess (who also plays character Jodi) and Vincent Enderby are an explosive twosome whom, like couples re-united often do, still finish each other’s sentences, making for a slick, fast-paced production. The set comprises solely of a bench and the pair certainly bring colour and energy to the basic design, jumping in and out of anecdotes and arguments with fluency and clear intentions. The play is simple and entertaining, albeit with a slightly strained sense of comedy and there are some real tender and recognisable moments between Jodi and Matt. However, it was difficult to shake off the feeling that this piece would have been more suited to a classroom full of teenagers as a cautionary tale of the dangers of an internet that, as Matt reminds us, “is moving so fast, we’re just making the rules up as we go along”.

NAKED is playing at VAULT Festival 2015 until 1 March. For more information and tickets, see the Vault Festival website.