Storehouse: Truth Lies Here 

The idea of ‘Storehouse: Truth Lies Here’, playing at the Storehouse in Deptford, fascinated me: the collection, an archive of all the world’s digital data in an underground cavern. And when I went to the press junket a few days prior to press night and saw the wondrous and intricate set, which has architectural imagination (not just in scale but in scope), and we got a taster of the scenes that would be part of the final performance, I remained deeply curious. This was not, it was clear, to be a show about the evil of big data; data that is sold around the world to governments and companies for political and capitalistic ends. This storehouse was created by four founders- for whom the collection of data was like a treasure trove, a way to store our written memories, for no other reason perhaps, than why we store pictures in our phones, our laptops or, if we’re really old school or retro., in albums.

So…how it begins is this. We walk through a tunnel path; locked on either side of us are huge cylinders covered in brown paper with the words – Storehouse newsprint- written on them. This space, we’re reminded, was news mogul Rupert Murdoch’s print-room and as such, it already has a sense of ominous darkness to it. We’re led into one of several identikit rooms; like a waiting room, with a framed picture of the four founding fathers/mothers on the wall. We’re addressed as ‘trustees’. And told, that in the end, we’ll be called on to make a verdict which will decide Storehouse’s future. It’s like being in a live board/video game. So far, so good. We’re led through a door, a room bursting to the seams, a room of chaos, but with certain objects: scissors, threads, boxed on the walls, in precise order. A man is pottering around, flustered. He points us to a whiteboard and tells us Storehouse was founded in 1983 -the year the Internet was invented – and that its purpose is to store the world’s digital data. They store the data in books – which is a quaint idea; the new being bound in the old. On the whiteboard is a date: January, 2025. The date the aggregation was supposed to, but didn’t happen. This was supposed to be the birth of a Truthtopia. But something, he doesn’t know what, went wrong. The idea he’d given his allegiance to had failed and he’s left with the knowledge that he’s been burrowed underground for forty-two years, in which time his skin hasn’t seen the light of the sun. 

The man is a bookbinder. As his is a monologue, there’s a lot of telling that takes place. He raises a Moroccan style lamp and tells us and shows us how he uses different coloured lenses to analyse and catalogue the data. His warmth, as a person/character emerges when he tells us he was, in his former life, a sculptor, and speaks of how a friend who’d supported him, broke his heart by breaking the bonds of friendship. He moved to the Storehouse, we suspect, to escape the gossip around him that ensued.

A caretaker then rushes in, and together they talk of the leaks that are threatening Storehouse’s very existence. Culture Club’s ‘Karma Chameleon’ plays and they dance. And indeed, whenever the song randomly plays, the characters are compelled, we don’t know why, to dance, until the last time it plays and someone says the glorious, ‘Fuck Off.’

We’re then led to a passage and then a space, covered in white fluffed up, cloud like wool. You want to touch it and because no-one says not to, you do. It’s now the stacker we meet. She tries to convince us how arduous her job is. There is irony here. But not any real joke. We’re told and shown that someone is tampering with the books. But when we open the books it looks like nothing more dangerous than blots of paint, on A4 sheets of paper, folded and taped with neat strands of Sellotape. Given how much thought was given to the design of Storehouse, more, I feel, design/ thought was required from this particular element, so crucial as it is to raising the stakes of fear.

An alarm goes off and we’re led to a space that looks like a giant bird’s nest. The stacker explains that they’ve invented a new simpler lamp –with just two lenses – fiction and joy. We’re given a lamp each and told to go and stack the papers we’ve been given, using our lamps, into the right slots. Bucks Fizz’s ‘Making Your Mind Up’ plays and if the intention is to grate our nerves, it works.

The denouement, which I won’t reveal, but which takes place at a huge hexagon structure filled with black ink, is disappointing. There’s a lot of soap-box style discussions; none of them convincing. And then we’re called on for our verdicts. It should feel like being spectators at the Coliseum but by now, I don’t think there are many of us who care which way it goes. And then we’re led to a higher level where we can see the edifice of the built structure and here, we have out words repeated back to us. I thought the audience looked, for the most part, perplexed. What did it/does it all mean?

I’m glad the company didn’t take the obvious political route (data bad), not because the collection of data isn’t bad but because it’s too simplistic an argument. But there are so many story elements they could have and didn’t explore: Memory and its significance to human existence; how much energy data (and especially AI, which was, strangely, not mentioned in this show) expends; how data centres are being built- the energy from which will, it is hoped, feed back into communities; how the technology problem is a social problem. They also missed out on exploring the idea of how the worker bees (and beehive hexagons are an integral signature of the design), who live underground have, in the process (removed as they are from the material world and submerged as they are in artificial material) become bestial. This theme could have been examined as it superbly is in H.G. Wells’ ‘The Time Machine. Another lost potential idea was how the workers’ allegiance to the founders was cult like and what happens to people when the day of deliverance fails.

Ultimately, I did not care about the people enough and their danger did not feel anything close to real danger, despite all the running around. It was neither an idea rich nor a drama rich show.

The set is stunning, though. The actors, no doubt talented, if a little lost; the costumes are like arch clown outfits, a pastiche of the 80s, but the script, written by a cohort of six writers – is, and there is no other way of saying it: rather awful.

I’d close the show down for two weeks, recalibrate and begin all over again. There is potential here, possibly great potential. It just hasn’t been explored fully. There is a story in here but it’s just not coming out. I should know. I wrote and published a novel like that.