In his ground-breaking performance of The Believers Are But Brothers at the Birmingham Hippodrome, Javaad Alipoor sucks his audience into a world of cyber radicalism and disillusioned young men. His 2017 Scotsman Fringe First Award-winning production explores how radicalism online can tap in to the fears and doubts of young men all over the world and give them something to cling to.

The entire piece is performed by Alipoor himself, as he flits from breaking the fourth wall and chatting to the audience to facing away from us and speaking through a video projection and gaming headset. As we enter the theatre, audience members are encouraged to join a Whatsapp group for the show, through which we are then sent any number of seemingly random memes and comments.

As the show progresses we are encouraged to participate through the Whatsapp group and to guess statistics and facts about immigration. Although for much of the show Alipoor is facing away from us, and we only see him through a digital interface, a sense of community is swiftly established within the room as we are all part of this private Whatsapp group. The use of Whatsapp for the audience was an ingenious way to enable us to better understand what it can be like to feel a connection with someone with whom we have never actually met.

The show is a rollercoaster of intertwining stories from different men, guiding us through their individual journeys so that we can see how they ended up ‘extremists’. Expect to be challenged, as this show raises questions of not just the power and potential danger of technology, but misogyny within gaming culture, political manipulation and the notion of community and brotherhood.

The Believers Are But Brothers is an intellectually stimulating and socially poignant piece of theatre which asks serious questions about the state of extremism in the UK and beyond, and critiques the way in which we as a society have chosen to deal with it. If you are looking for something unconventional that will keep you on your toes and leave you with more questions than you arrived with, then this show is exactly what you are looking for. It’s provocative and problematic and probes us to discuss taboo subjects that are all too often overlooked or avoided so as not to make anyone feel uncomfortable.