There’s a moment during In Black Water when a character quotes the Persian poet, Rumi: “the world is too full to talk about”. So is this production. Billed as ‘a play about stories’, In Black Water is so full of frills—music, projections, voiceovers—that the story’s kernel slips by, unnoticed and unheard. And it’s a shame, because this story about memory, writing, love, and the injustice of dementia, is one that we can all connect to, but only if it lets its audience in.

Taking its myth from Plato’s Phaedrus, the play offers up four archetypes: Writer, Artist, Narrator, and Theuth—The Egyptian god of writing (not a lispy Zeus), who exchanges inspiration with our Writer in return for memories.

Visually stunning, the only thing Tom Chandler’s set lacks is the actors’ interaction. It’s all far too static. Sheets of paper perfect for Ford’s writing dangle from the walls, unused, decorative rather than deliberate. When the sound design serves the storytelling, it’s superb: the ticking of a heartbeat in the silence. But then it’s drowned out by an incongruous soundtrack from a WWII film.

“I’d love to see these stories as a short-film or poetry collection”

Kitty Ford puts body and soul into her performance as the Writer. It’s a terrifyingly demanding role: possessed at times by Theuth, writhing, panting incessantly, with little respite in the script. But there’s one question that prevents us from empathising with her struggle: why does she write? The Writer’s plight feels trivial, and no amount of epic music or dramatic lighting can cajole us into empathy or interest. What’s left is a mythic writer-hero who takes herself too seriously—we have enough of those in Cambridge already.

Maddy Power brings gleeful excitement to her role as Narrator. Houselights on, her opening lines promise to look the audience in the eye. But by the second half, we’ve lost her, bogged down by language that verges too far on the abstract for even the best narrator to navigate. Ella Scott’s perpetually present Theuth negotiates the tall order of bringing fantasy to the Corpus corner with confidence and surrealism.

Eirlys Lovell-Jones’ performance as the Artist is this play’s saving grace. The play has a tendency towards clichéd ‘I love you’s that lose their fire with every repetition. Lovell-Jones shrugs off this pretence, and her candour—the pain of losing her father to dementia, thought by thought—tells a far more poignant story.

Say what you want about In Black Water, but one thing you cannot fault is its ambition. The devil works hard, but my god do publicists Alicia Powell and Katie Wrench work harder; the results are nothing short of perfect.

We’re swamped by big name, West End remakes in Cambridge. What’s lacking is the experimental, risky student theatre. But original pieces are difficult. Everyone is so involved that they lack the objective eye, knowing where to cut or tweak. I’d love to see these stories written down; they would work well as a short-film or poetry collection. But as a piece of theatre, In Black Water leaves its audience in the dark.