A play about machines is driven by a machine. This one is as arbitrary as the free-market tides that push workers in and out of their jobs. At intervals through the show a ball will drop on Hazel Low’s gantry set, all Amazon blues and yellows. Which side of the stage it lands, after a bagatelle journey to the ground, determines the scene that follows. With 256 variations, no two performances of Joe Ward Munrow’s play will be alike.
You wonder, though, whether they will be all that different. The Legend of Ned Ludd is constructed from snapshots of industrial strife, each scene placed like an identical brick in whatever order it shows up.
My night begins at a factory in Detroit in 2016 where a multinational is taking over and wages are being slashed. We move to some decorators in Liverpool, 1985, taking pride in craftsmanship, and to a meeting of Marx and Engels in Paris, 1844, when they discuss the division of labour. In time, we will go to Nigeria, Libya and China.
After every couple of scenes, we return to Nottingham, 1816, where the folkloric Ned Ludd – the original Luddite – is galvanising his fellow workers to resist the automation of the looms. Everywhere, wages fall, quality drops and profits soar. Violence towards the machines comes next. Without protest, who will remember things were ever different?
In Jude Christian’s production, actors Reuben Johnson, Menyee Lai and Shaun Mason take surprisingly little pleasure in the unpredictability of the format. Their approach, perhaps appropriately, is workmanlike, tackling each scene with sombre focus. You can, however, only admire the agility of the backstage crew, serving up the right props, surtitles and lighting cues with robot-like efficiency.
But if you expect a cumulative power in these scenes, with their Brechtian independence, you will be disappointed. Each is modestly interesting but, being downbeat more than galvanising, they have limited political bite. Nor do they resonate much with each other. In the age of AI, Joe Ward Munrow has lit upon an urgent theme, but this is too reflective a play to make anyone go out and smash the looms.