The Legend of Ned Ludd – Everyman Theatre, Liverpool

The cast list is handed over rolled up like a treasure map (as well as a poster: a sinister robotic head against a binary code background); you need a few clues because this random collection of vignettes doesn’t always shed much light.

And you could call it irony that a play dealing with commercialism and the Industrial Revolution, machines taking over, has a High Tec setting, yellow scaffolding with what looks like an Amazon warehouse at the back, fronted by a factory. Props are robustly manhandled or pop up through the floor or are doled out on conveyor belts. Including clothing; the cast are booted and suited as it were in a brown and beige peasant uniform, which helps enable role and gender swapping: fair play, Shaun Mason as the sulky little girl hankering after a balloon, while in the final scene, Menyee Lai Is promoted to a gun toting solder, full of bravado. Along with Reuben Johnson (Ned Ludd…possibly), the actors are all extremely adroit, especially having to turn and turn again in so many different times and places.

The play covers a lot of ground, the Machine at its heart. Our lives proceeded to flash before us, or rather, theirs do, locations and times whizzing past on a narrow screen until down to two, the final one selected à la bingo, a tube of red balls. The same screen is used to show translations into German and Chinese.

So here we go, and first off is a two-hander set in Detroit; the threat of wages being lowered, and jobs lost. Lai tries to charm her co-worker (Mason) into paying attention to her mini garage sale, and paying up; goods include a cuddly toy, Barney, which could be a nod to a nightmarish scene in China where the same two are young adult prisoners who seem to have to divide their time between making toys and playing computer games even when almost mindlessly tired.

Things lighten up with a pair of Liverpool painters and decorators; mentor and apprentice, the latter being taught the difference between work and craft. This worked well, yet you then barely had the chance to work out which was Marx and which Engels, chattering about Communism in a Parisian Cafe. And the depiction of three schoolchildren in Lagos was a puzzle, one of them explaining (insofar as she could), that the Eerie tribe disappeared but nobody can find out why. There’s even a scene mostly set in rhyme, and one thing you will come away with is the desire to find out more. It would also be interesting to come along another night because the same location presumably has another story up its sleeve; must admit, I’d have preferred to watch ‘Here & Then’ rather than ‘Here & Now’ simply because then could be interpreted as past or future.

Interspersed throughout, as well as opening and closing the play, is the story of Ned Ludd, Nottingham 1816, and the struggles of the Luddites, the voiceovers enhanced by song. And prescient since man versus machine is now man against A! And worse because we welcomed the Internet into our lives.

The road to Hell, they say is paved with good intentions. Mostly bad here in fact, and it’s lined with desperate people bearing witness. A play which is certainly not as easy as 1111011 (ok, 123), but very well received by the audience, perhaps a third going as far as standing ovations.

Playing until 11th May, https://www.everymanplayhouse.com/whats-on/the-legend-of-ned-ludd

Reviewer: Carole Baldock

Reviewed: 24th April 2024

North West End UK Rating: