Identity Crisis simmered mildly, I think. So much potential, and yet so many jokes fell flat. It’s a shame. The play had points of brilliance: the two leads, played by Hattie Clark and Laura Moss, were very, very good — believable, articulate, witty — but in spite of their obvious abilities, they still struggled with the script. It was too copious, too stuffed with simile; there were too many jokes jumping on top of each other, and few of them were able to properly land. The script was not bad in itself, but it remains in desperate need of surgery — just to give each joke more of a chance to air — or perhaps it could have poked fun at the tech conglomerates that the play criticises so roundly, instead of dashing wildly between current affairs and meme culture. There was a lot of sniggering — mostly silent — the only time I heard audible laughter was when Macky Padilla rolled across the stage, slapstick-style, in the guise of a caricatured spy; that should not be the funniest part of a play so riddled with jokes. 

Please, can there never, ever again be another rap like this one.

The plot itself was effective and entertaining, if implausible in places. How the hell am I to believe that two teenagers could find their way into the office of a Silicon Valley CEO? There were, however, some fantastic moments: Thea Grønhaug made for an entertaining bank teller, and she certainly had the best lines. Also, certain characters expressed discomfort at the idea of personally revealing secrets in front of an audience, which was a clever comment on the ways in which we find human eyes too prying, too invasive, and yet we can fully accept the single eye of a Californian panopticon. I especially liked the ending, which was perfectly written, though the last line of the play should have been delivered rather more urgently. And while I’m on the topic of the urgent: please, can there never, ever again be another rap like this one. It was awkward, terrifying, anguishing, and I wish I’d never seen it. Worse, my estimate of its sum total contribution to anything remotely pertaining to the play amounted to precisely nothing. Could it be cut? — it’s a dead weight. There are other ways to emphasise a blackguard’s blackguardism.

The set was perfectly adequate; it was well-designed but hardly exceptional. Its minimalism suited the constant rearrangements of the stage, all of which were done very neatly, though the direction might have profited immensely if the lighting capacities of the venue had been more fully employed. There was also an unexplained beeping at one point, though I don’t know how deliberate that was. The play did suffer from an inattention to detail. Characters started moving before lights had been cut; and at the very end, the lights did not stay cut for long enough, so there was a mild confusion over whether the play had in fact finished.

Identity Crisis is a play exactly equal to the sum of its parts, just some of those parts are quite a lot more equal than others, and I wish one of those parts in particular had not diminished the play so much. It gives the impression that it is still in some inchoate, not yet fully formed, as though a reedition is in order, so I look forward to seeing what Ayush Prasad does next.