By Declan Greene. Griffin Theatre and Perth Theatre Company, Stables Theatre, Sydney, May 7.

THE title of Declan Greene’s new play is misleading in one respect because it is not at all about pornography. But in its expression – so caressing in cadence and so ugly in import – the name brilliantly captures the bleak oppositions that drive Eight Gigabytes of Hardcore Pornography. There have never been so many ways to communicate and so little connection. Never so many goodies to fill the home to overflowing yet so much emptiness. Never so much stimulation available at the tap of a keyboard and such a paucity of genuine satisfaction.

Not that Greene gets bogged down in sociological argument. He can leave that work to us: Eight Gigabytes is a play not easily dismissed or forgotten. Greene’s eye for economy is as merciless as it is effective. He is not yet 30 but seems to have the quality novelist Graham Greene said was necessary for a writer: a sliver of ice in the heart. He is succinct, unsentimental, has a superb eye for detail and gets the job done in not much over an hour.

This epidemic of unfulfilled desire and coruscating loneliness is dissected with laser accuracy. A man and a woman, both unnamed, meet via a dating site. He is married and obsessively into pornography, she is a nurse with an out-of-control shopping habit. Both have a core of self-loathing covered with a thin layer of coping. He is the greater fantasist and she the more self-aware but they’re both in deep, deep trouble.

He appears to be fairly aware of what he’s doing, although attempts to put a romantic gloss on it. He’s really into the adoration of women, you see. They’re just so beautiful. But then there’s a fleeting mention of women’s ages – girls’ ages – and the man’s little smirk suggests something much nastier. She kids herself less than he does about what’s going wrong but can’t stop the rot.

On the page Eight Gigabytes reads like a series of interior monologues giving off only enough light to slash your wrists by. The man and woman interact a couple of times but mostly they give voice to inner demons and wrestle with ever more humiliating circumstances. We are invited to come right inside and see the mess. It is intimate, difficult, exposing stuff.

On the stage director Lee Lewis softens some of the edges early on, possibly just a touch too much. Who knew there were that many belly laughs in self-abnegation and social unease? But she clearly loves these characters, giving them a moment of supreme tenderness at the end that is all the more heartbreaking for being utterly illusory.

Lewis’s cast is unimprovable. The man could be utterly repugnant as he revels in his deceits and fancies but against all the odds Steve Rodgers demands to be understood. Andrea Gibbs, who is primarily a comedian, is a revelation: maddening, oddly gallant and incredibly touching.

Canberra to June 21; Perth, July 1-12.

A version of this review appeared in The Australian on May 9.