The London International Mime Festival has always been a notably broad church, but a production staged in total darkness seemed likely to be a pew too far even for LIMF. In the event – and as its title might suggest - Light is staged more in the interruptions of total darkness. The basic theatrical blackout is far more complete than usual; then a series of flashes and beams break through for seconds at a time, illuminating the cast of five as they depict a near-future dystopia where connection has become surveillance has become control.
    
Torch beams demarcate physical spaces; LEDs, individually or in bars, suggest technological processes. Single red LEDs flash through the darkness symbolising data or “thought messages” from one person’s brain directly to another’s – hence, aha for the Mime Festival, little need for speech. Such “dialogue” as there is remains unspoken, being instead displayed as surtitling. Chris Batholomew’s sound design cues the cast’s movements to summon up the image of the various machines and gizmos they work with.
    
Alex Dearden, a none too successful agent of Peace Of Mind, is sent by his father (the corporation director and leader of the nation) to hunt dissidents who get themselves disconnected from the grid whereby PoM oversees the population, by having their brain implants removed (cue unsettling Black & Decker noises). The doctor carrying out these clandestine operations turns out to be Alex’s mother, who in brain-connected flashback (aha again, the very word!) recounts how she invented the first implants only for them to be perverted and abused by Dearden senior.
    
A programme note by writer/director George Mann reveals that “light” is current spook-speak for the metadata of our communications routinely yet often illegally collected by the NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK, according to the material leaked by Edward Snowden. I think the success of Mann’s piece depends on whether one considers it as a prediction of a possible tomorrow or a parable of today; if the former, it may be too little and already too late, if the latter it is trenchant but ultimately a counsel of despair.

Written for the Financial Times.