Photo: Mark Douet
The iconic London Tube Map is known the world over. But what about the man who invented it? Very little is known about Harry Beck, until now.
Enter Andy Burden, writer and director, who’s made it his mission to shine a light on this quiet genius who changed the way we see and understand London.
It’s funny when you think about it, the Tube map is such a taken for granted thing. Stations are leisurely dotted along coloured lines, circles show how you can change routes, and in one complete and easily digestible format, you can get where you want to go. It’s a remarkable feat of compression and visual ingenuity to distil the London Underground’s 250 miles of track and 272 stations across 11 lines into one handy map. But that’s what Harry Beck did.
Sadly, when he died in 1974, he was not recognised as the inventor.
‘The Truth About Harry Beck’ is a reckoning of the past. With a cast of just two: Harry Beck (Simon Snashall) and his wife Nora Beck (Ashley Christmas) the pair take us on the unlikely journey of how this cultural icon of a map came into being.
It’s surprising how such a simple real-life story can be so interesting – and it is utterly illuminating. Nora Beck melts into a multitude of roles to highlight the issues Harry faced and the rejections overcame, while Harry plays the role of obsessive inventor perfectly.
The 70-minute performance is packed with love, loss, wit, triumph and tragedy, and zips along merrily imparting a host of engaging facts which likely you’d never know about the Tube, or the world, when the invention of this map was happening.
‘The Truth About Harry Beck’ is an enlightening play that is sure to appeal to both Londoners and tourists alike. Sited in the London Transport Museum’s newly built Cubic Theatre in the heart of Covent Garden, it offers a rare glimpse of history in action. Beck invented a global icon, and with his story in my heart, I will never look at a Tube map the same way again.
Reviewer: Samantha Collett
Reviewed: 18th September 2024
North West End UK Rating:
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