I’m pedalling to The Union Theatre at dusk for Linda Wilkinson’s latest take on historic London, Ghosts On A Wire. At The Union Jack pub, I ponder the historical figures in tonight’s tale of power and greed on the Thames foreshore: Octavia Hill, William Blake, Michael Faraday and Frankenstein’s creator Mary Shelley. My reveries beneath the railway viaduct are broken by a proffered claw-like bandaged hand and a scarred but familiar face. No monster this, instead it’s the editor of this arts page. Unable to write the review due to injury he has ventured to join me. Dr Frankenstein to my monstrous prose would be more exact. The pressure is on and I’m fully charged as we enter the auditorium, writes Ed Gray.
House lights dim and… we are here, right here in Blackfriars on the site of the Pioneer, a palace of lights, the first incarnation of Giles Scott’s power station now filled with bittersweet creative forces, a legacy of sugar magnate Henry Tate who sucked energy from one continent to power the workforce of another. Trains rumble and screech around us in real time as the Pioneer hums ominously onstage.
Linda and her team have weaved a play about place, time and power that corrupts, and poisons the air until you taste grit. The Albion Mill has burnt down, new energy is required to power the city. Faraday and Blake discuss a new magical power source, electricity, existing in parallel to the electricity that courses through nerves and veins. We are introduced to Shelley and her book about a doctor who powers a monster with electricity. This same current enables a poor Southbank workforce to light wealthy Northbank homes and fire up printing presses that alternately charge up the masses or prod them into submission. The mood shifts as we recognise our collective South London fate.
This ambitious play feels somewhat drained of power given the subject. Highlights are a séance with eclectic trickery mischievously fused by a fully charged poltergeist and a love scene between Octavia Hill (Gerri Farrell) and long-term companion Harriot Yorke revealing the struggles of a feminist icon to ‘breathe life into the poor’ whilst battling John Ruskin. Today, Hill is an example of a successful urban planner despite a raucously played mess of old Etonians plotting to control her and use the monstrous new leviathan at Blackfriars to exploit Londoners, breathing death into the poor via chemical smog and poison seeping into the river. Dr Lion Playfair(Andrew Fettes), an MP and Electric Company boss, mocks Hill’s stoic defence of her welfare plans: ‘What did you expect restaurants and art galleries?’ He says, bringing the tale full circle to settle on the Bankside we know and love today.
Wilkinson reminds us things are what they used to be; developers undercut social housing, gentrification surgically removes and transplants communities, power corrupts and who controls the power source controls the people. We’re all still marching to William Blake’s march of Mammon. At the line ‘Even hot water comes at a price’ I imagine the audience contemplating whether to switch the radiators on yet.
The play ends with a vista of St Paul’s, our dome of continuity; ‘Existence has gathered us here, tied us to this patch of land.’
Cycling home through Southwark streets my dynamo fails to light up and I’m gratefully aware of the buzz of bright lights around me and the sacrifices made to light our way.
Union Theatre, Old Union Arches, 229 Union Street, London, SE1 0LR until October 8. Times: Monday-Saturday 19.30; Matinees Saturdays 14.30. Admission: (between £10-£25), Southwark Residents £15 (with proof)
Box Office: 020 7261 9876 – http://uniontheatre.biz/show/ghosts-on-a-wire/
Photos: Martin Butterworth
