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Writers of tech dystopias have got their work cut out, these days, as the wildest imaginings of fabulists from Asimov to Roddenberry are turned into real, marketable products. And playwright Rose Lewenstein hasn't had to leap far into this future to create her patchy tech satire 'Darknet'. Presumably inspired by Facebook, Google et al's increasingly ruthless deployment of our personal data, she's created Octopus inc, a thoroughly villainous social-network-cum-employer that commodifies people's life choices into cash.
Jamie (Jim English) is a teenage hacker who helps Kyla (Ella McLoughlin) buy methadone for her heroin-addicted mum Stacey (Rosie Thomson), by delving into the encrypted 'dark' web. There's some pretty topical satire, as Stacey's terror of damaging her Octopus score stops her from accessing healthcare, in a world where illness, having a Muslim name, and even posting too many cat pics can damage your value to marketers. But it's lost in a hopelessly muddled plot that flicks between scenes with all the agility of a desk-worker multiple-tab browsing their way through a long hangover.
Director Russell Bender must be one of very few people who's followed a stint at clown school (Jacques LeCoq) with a career as a senior web developer (on box office software Spectrix, aptly enough). But his pretty niche set of skills aren't deployed with very great success. The cast feel underrehearsed, and all at sea as they attempt bits of fussy physical theatre business with wooden frames and ping pong balls. And the production's internet dystopia is unexpectedly dated - the inhabitants of the deep dark web have all the menace of off-duty Cyberdog employees, cavorting in neon wigs and fishnet gloves.
Combined with characters that are reduced to hackneyed social stereotypes – the Eastern European sex worker with a heart, the mindlessly smartphone-addicted teen, the monosyllabic boy hacker – this is a blunt instrument. An Acorn computer that's too lumbering for the dizzyingly complex landscape its trying to process.