I Have No Enemies

Christopher Samuel Carroll – the director, lead performer and probably lead devisor – says in the closing moments of I Have No Enemies, ‘This is a play about surveillance.’  It is - and as this witty, subversive, rocket speed, and superbly performed show demonstrates, we are all under surveillance.  You might say, ‘Me?  Surely not.  I have no enemies!’  Maybe not, but should you acquire some or just an algorithm (and not even know it), your data is being collected every moment and could be used against you.  Watch cast member Brendan Kelly in Act II try to extricate himself from all social media, all accounts and internet connections, only to find it’s too late and impossible.  The Internet is inextricably woven into every interchange and transaction of our world.  They – whoever ‘they’ are – have got us.

It all begins when ‘Chris’ (Christopher Samuel Carroll), working for a subcontracted transcription company, discovers a voice-mail rant from Phil – a paranoid isolate at odds with the world, his bank, his daughter, his ex-wife, his neighbours…  Chris and his hacker mates – ‘Brendan’ (Brendan Kelly), ‘Lloyd’ (Lloyd Allison-Young) and ‘Rachel’ (Rachel Pengilly) are intrigued; they’re going to track and find Phil.  Why?  Mostly because they can.

The technical brilliance and stagecraft of I Have No Enemies are achieved in the dizzying combinations of its elements.  Any concept of the ‘fourth wall’ comes and goes at will, or as needed.  The transitions are dizzying – but such is the quality of the performances, we are rarely lost.  The cast segues (although ‘segue’ is probably too soft a word here given the cracking pace) from depicting four characters – hackers - searching for ‘Phil’, to four actors (supposedly ‘real’ people) constructing a theatre show about hacking and the search for ‘Phil’, to a sort of slide show cum lecture on the history of the Internet from its very inception up to the present, including side references to certain prescient 1990s movies that warned of the traps and dangers of a future of electronic surveillance.  (The movies were just sci-fi movies; we weren’t warned.)  Rachel Pengilly also provides the design for the hackers’ lair: a cyberpunk cave of dusty desks, screens, filing cabinets (only for clothing and food), wires and cables.  The look is just right.

The switches in and out of the show’s ‘characters’ and the ironic history lecture are very funny, but they’re also employed to jerk us out of any real belief in what’s happening on stage – and to remind us of the rather terrifying real world.  When one actor questions the search for Phil, he is immediately chastised for trying to destroy ‘the whole premise of this show!’  And the show rolls on.

The hacking and Internet elements are illustrated and enhanced by Chloe Brett and Brad Moss (of SilverSun Pictures) evocative projections taking us right back to the crude, rather amateurish beginnings and bringing us, with increasing dread, up to the slick, all-too-pervasive now.

For all its innovation and intelligence, however, I Have No Enemies as a ‘group devised’ piece falls into a familiar trap: it just goes on too long.  To my great disappointment – because everything had been so risky, clever and enjoyable, Act II actually starts to drag and what is clever becomes too clever by half.  The element of a computer game, Tortoise Run, obsessively and expertly played by Rachel feels – to me – neither here nor there.  Is it to make the point of how easily we can be distracted by a silly game from the fact that merely playing it gives us away?

Although the frenetic, hectic pace probably means the cast needs a break, we don’t - and having an interval feels like an ill-judged decision.  Narrative drive loses momentum and then Act II finds the show rather searching for an ending, edging toward desperate with a thriller movie type sequence – a break in at a top-secret facility – with some choreography or mime that doesn’t quite fit with the rest.  Nevertheless, even if we get just a little weary and impatient, these flaws are minor compared to the originality of the whole.

Overall, I Have No Enemies is superbly conceived and performed.  The multi-tasking cast are uniformly excellent – each sharply defined - with Christopher Samuel Carroll a driving, menacing, obsessive force both as the hacker leader and the authoritarian devisor of a theatre show about hacking and surveillance.

Bare Witness Theatre Company is from Canberra.  I’m grateful that Theatre Works found a slot for them, and I hope we’ll see more of them.

Michael Brindley