The historical significance of the year 1884 is not explained at the beginning of this piece of game theatre. The atmosphere is neighbourly as we settle into groups around purpose-built model homes in a garden community on the fictional Wilhelm Street.
Upon friendly instruction, we become families making the homes our own. There is talk of street parties, barbecues and book clubs. But slowly, through a series of local council announcements, the rules of the community change, first to standardise our new abodes and then to curtail our freedoms in them.
We only find out at the end that the game has been based on the seminal Berlin conference in 1884 at which the western world met to partition the African continent. That conference set imperial history in motion and, by 1902, 90% of Africa had come under western colonial rule.
There is no mention of Africa or the 1884 conference in the protracted first act (though it is mentioned in publicity materials). As a room in each of our homes is sequestered and our lives are increasingly surveilled, the social changes we experience seem less a consequence of colonialism than of a state authoritarianism which carries the beginnings of fascism.
The piece is co-created by the arts charity Coney and Rhianna Ilube, along with writers and game designers Tsitsi Mareika Chirikure, Chloe Mashiter and malakaï sergeant. Jyuddah Jaymes plays a DJ who gets the game going; Ewa Dina poses as a neighbour who visits when we first move in; and Chusi Amorós delivers post containing instructions. Under the direction of Tatenda Shamiso, they remain amenable – even when they become implicated in authoritarianism.
The pace is slow in the first act, and we are home-building for too long. But then when signs of repression appear, instructions come too thick and fast and the tension is just not turned up enough. Because this part of the game is stopped before any serious confrontation, what we experience seems unfinished and approximate.
It is gratifying nonetheless to see that our room resists the repressive measures. We form a union and disrupt an official meeting. All but one “family” rises up in this way, but the stakes never feel very high as we make our protests, and we are not given the greater historical context which would let us feel a sense of danger.
The short second act brings a dramatic shift and might benefit from being longer. Now the themes of this show become clearer – from how the history of western oppression gets “cleaned up” and mythologised, to the question of who writes the narrative. The 1884 conference is finally mentioned, albeit not in any great detail, and the reflection on its outcomes is brief. We see, in miniature, how authoritarianism grows and how history is rewritten, but these points are generic and far too gently made. We do not walk away feeling the outrage, or the fear, that we should.
• At Shoreditch Town Hall, London, until 27 April
