Blackfriars' 'Too Much Light' has laughs, energy, and some cringe 

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A timer projected on the wall and brightly-colored sheets of paper strung on a clothesline across the stage greet the audience at Blackfriars Theatre for its production of “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind.” The sheets contain numbers, each corresponding to a play that will be performed during the show.

The premise of “Too Much Light,” which runs through Feb. 13, is this: 30 micro-plays in 60 minutes. The plays are scripted, but the order in which they are performed is not. The audience reads from a menu of plays and calls out the number of the one they’d like to see next, giving the show the “anything can happen” energy of a night of improv.

Since its inception in 1988 by Greg Allen and the Neo-Futurists, a Chicago-based collective of writers and performers, this play has been widely produced nationally and its cultural impact has transcended theater. It even inspired a “This American Life” episode in 2003.

Whether you’re a longtime fan of the show or are just curious to experience it, Blackfriars offers a solid production. Kerry Young’s direction stays faithful to the fast-paced, well-structured chaotic spirit of the piece, and the cast members create a party-like atmosphere through their amiability and enthusiasm.
The actors follow the Neo-Futurists’ ethos of approaching the evening with “absolute honesty,” going by their real names as they race through each play with the help of the audience. As a heads up, audience participation doesn’t always feel optional, especially if you have an aisle seat.

What are these short plays about? With the caveat that different pieces will be presented every night, some recurring topics from the opening night show include heterosexual conflict, violence, comedic gags, riffs on cultural references like Shakespeare, and self-aware jokes about making theatre. There were quite a lot of those.

While these pieces must have felt fresh in the late 1980s, the writing leaves much to be desired when performed in an Internet age that has mastered the art of 15-second entertainment. The innovation, humor, and social commentary of TikTok sets a high bar that most of these plays don’t meet.
Some of the plays did amuse — shout out to “Poultrygeist” — but several of the plays felt like amateur writing exercises or worse, dated. The inclusion of “Flammable Pants” felt particularly disappointing for 2022. The piece asks the audience to be honest about certain things that are implied to be shameful or embarrassing, including human experiences that activists have spent decades trying to de-stigmatize, such as being gay or struggling with mental health.

Since the order is random, but brains like patterns, the audience will naturally look for meaning in what they see. This can be fun, since it means an audience member will have a completely different experience than their neighbor. Since I’m a geek for narrative structure, I enjoyed that “Zenith” got chosen around the time in the evening when a story’s climax would typically occur. Normal people probably wouldn’t care.

The randomized order can also be a detriment, though. “Memorial Day,” a piece that decries gun violence, appeared to be try to offer somber social commentary. But it got laughs from an audience that was primed for a play as silly as its predecessors. The glib “How to War,” which relies on traumatic images for shock value, felt exploitative as it quickly dismissed real world tragedies to move on to the next play.
The evening was redeemed by the charisma and camaraderie of the cast. Each actor in the ensemble of 12 brought something unique and valuable to the show. In a short amount of time, they conveyed their personality through their clothing, affect, and physicality.

At the end of each show, an audience member rolls a die to decide how many plays from that night’s performance will be swapped out with others from the “Too Much Light” repertoire for the following night’s performance.

The 30 plays that get presented may be hits or misses, but the actors performing them are a joy to watch and, fortunately, that doesn’t change each night.

Katherine Varga is a freelance writer for CITY. Feedback on this article can be directed to Daniel J. Kushner, CITY's arts editor, at [email protected].