Dialektikon
Park Theatre, London

IN JACKIE Ivimy’s Dialektikon, Miranda has to make a choice — exist in a world of mindless consumption and turn a blind eye to the suffering of those around her while ignoring the inequalities necessarily produced by her indulgence or look to find another way.

When her nan passes away, she’s transported from her village somewhere in Africa to a world beyond her own, a strange other place ruled over by the evil Moloch. Miranda (Mary Nyambura) is guided through it and towards a rejection of a recognisably capitalist politics by Ayida Wedo (Sabina Cameron). She’s tempted towards those politics by Moloch's servant (Benjamin Victor), who’s part Puck, part Clockwork Orange droog.

This folktale for our time, both fable and political rant, bombards the audience with everything wrong with the world, parading the great men who’ve made a difference but also been fallible and it asks both the audience and Miranda to try to do better.

What it doesn’t do is give us a clear road towards improvement, despite suggesting that it will. Rather, we're overwhelmed with issues and characters and with no time to really fully explore the questions at hand — we merely bounce between them.

Often this means characters parrot political views we might be aware of already and there's no space to fully explore and interrogate them, let alone find one’s own relationship with them — as Wedo rightfully encourages Miranda to. These are vitally important conversations but here their treatment feels uncontrolled.

Adebayo Bolaji directs with a wonderful energy and the space is filled by the mystical other world, where puppets and dance invigorate the story brilliantly. But, as the actors marvel at the dream world they’re inhabiting, you can’t help but think that the production is missing a trick in communicating exactly what that sense of wonder is to the audience.

Runs until January 29, box office: parktheatre.co.uk.