Identity Crisis is a dark comedy that lies somewhere between a comic play and a sketch show, and revolves around data privacy, one of the most pressing issues of our time. Jointly written by the cast and the directors, the show’s aims are simple: we want to make people laugh, then make them think.

Most people treat targeted advertising in the same way as a sharp-ish stone stuck in an item of clothing: it’s just about bearable for something like shoes; you worry more if there’s a risk of it getting to something more private. The problem underpinning the discussion around data privacy is that the rules for talking about cybersecurity are apparently the same as those for Fight Club – which, incidentally, raises some of the same pre-2000 concerns about the influence of large multinationals in the 21st century. It doesn’t help that the omnivorous approach to data harvesting and processing taken by Facebook, Google, and the like is, like the Fight Club narrator’s insomnia, more than enough to keep people awake at night.

At the risk of sounding optimistic, the caveat to this is that data collection is hardly rigorous at this stage, and can definitely get the wrong end of the stick sometimes. My phone must have overheard me talking about my PhD on shape memory alloys, but it now seems to think I’m looking for some killer alloy rims for the car I don’t have.

So, where does Identity Crisis fit into the picture?

Behind the comic façade of wacky characters and irreverent punchlines are hidden truths. The main message to take away from the show is that everybody is a potential victim of fraud – the only question is when. The sheer extent of data collection going on nowadays means that nobody is safe from identity theft. There’s enough information out there to defraud just about anyone: all a scammer needs is a bit of motivation. It makes sense to target someone who is a little vulnerable and naive: university students are particularly at risk as they have all of the privileges of actual adults but without much of the life experience. In Identity Crisis, our unfortunate casualty is Alex (Hattie Clark).

If you haven’t been a victim of identity theft, you might know somebody who has. This is the situation Sam (Laura Moss) finds herself in. Sam has a little more knowhow than Alex, but any advice she gives sandwiched between sarcastic asides and sassy insults.

Having the money stolen is one thing; trying to get it back is a whole other ordeal. In terms of solving the problem, sometimes middle management doesn’t care, doesn’t know, or both. There’s our infuriatingly deadpan Bank Teller (Thea Grønhaug) and our gloriously incompetent Bank Manager (Carl Lawrence), who between them have every maddening, cringeworthy idiosyncracy down to a tee.

Behind the comic façade of wacky characters and irreverent punchlines are hidden truths.

The matter is complicated further by the fact that those who know most about cybersecurity are usually the ones behind the data collection in the first place – think social media company CEOs (Emma-Rose Bouffler) or government intelligence agency employees (Macky Padilla).

As for the Hacker (Rory Russell) himself, that remains to be seen. Nearly half of all identity scams are carried out by friends or family – but it really could be anyone. What is more certain is that at the end of it all, those left suffering most as a result of data mismanagement are ordinary people.

Although Identity Crisis does have an outlook similar in tone to that of Black Mirror, we hope to leave the audience feeling a little more positive after seeing the show: they’re not alone in being worried about data privacy, it isn’t just them feeling left behind by the dizzying rate of technological development, and just maybe they will have spent the last 50 minutes laughing. Hopefully.

Identity Crisis is on at the Corpus Playroom from 18th to 22nd February.