FringeReview UK 2026
Night City
Southwark Playhouse
Venue: Southwark Playhouse Little Studio, Borough
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Max Wilkinson’s Night City directed by Ebenezer Bamgboye premieres at Southwark Playhouse’s Borough Little Studio, till October 3.
This paean to the mass of gig workers who slave in precarity to make London buzz 24/7 is timely, personal, and a battle-cry with nuance: not easy to bring off.
Review
In a world where activist Twix says Ed Milliband’s made of vinegar, it’s not surprising that taxi driver Jack, who’s told this, tells Tia. “You won’t last a minute. This city’s gonna eat you up.” Everywhere it’s those who are eaten and those who get to eat. Tia’s feeding them too: a waitressing wannabe writer. Jack will take her to sights. So it’s a pity he’s lying dead at the beginning of the play. And carer Tamara hasn’t turned up yet. Max Wilkinson’s Night City directed by Ebenezer Bamgboye premieres at Southwark Playhouse’s Borough Little Studio, till October 3.
Wilkinson’s 90-minute epic of the gig economy links three main characters spooling and spinning round the city, often in Jack’s Go-Go taxi (think Uber). The three actors also multi-role, flip in and out through (and around) Olivia Jamieson’s elegantly simple set. A series of chains hang down: think late capitalist slavery. In this rectangular thrust into the horseshoe seating, everything’s gunmetal grey. Though these maze-like chains often flare at a touch with Arnim Friess’s lighting, which embraces an upstage video of taxi and movement; or at one point a character in close-up at the end. They’re visible even on a near side-seat. In the diminutive Little, it opens a big world in night glare.
Much of this is based on Wilkinson’s own experiences. And his obsession with those experiences mapping London: a character too in his superb 2023 play Union, at the Arcola. Jack (Jack Ambrose) is Edinburgh working-class and softening his accent hasn’t softened his resignation. As Bex Smith’s Twix lectures him cheerfully he’s long past swearing and determined to make his middle meet; as for unions and driver solidarity, they mean nothing. He once read books he tells Smith’s aspiring writer Tia, Smith’s main character, full of idealism. They’re attracted. But it’s not easy. He’s hesitant. She’s already pregnant.
Smith rolls with panache into another major character: Gigi or Geraldine Mitchum, a surprisingly Z-Gen-savvy 80-something born in the war. She’s mother of rapacious care-home owner Felix Mitchum who has a finger in Go-Go too. He makes Jack a proposition. He lays down the law to Tamara. “People and profits” he mantras, and you know he’s lying about people. “You can party for the next 45 seconds” he tells staff. Ambrose and Helena Pipe swap Felix roles, even Smith. It’s a simple matter of a cap, as his malign influence stalks through all their lives.
Pipe’s caring Tamara has been dissed as a failure as nurse and singer, and caring’s all she feels she’s good at. Her Jamaican heritage gives her zero confidence in fairness. Wealthy Gigi is spiky – Smith relishes this foul-mouthed yet witty octogenarian. “Since 2007? I’ve had sex since then” she parries Tamara’s lack of romance. Tamara persuades Gigi out – on Felix’s orders; which Tamara finesses to Gigi’s delight. Mother and son don’t talk: Gigi’s dead or dying against everything he stands for and seems preternaturally well-informed. She asks Tamara questions too. By contrast Felix’s rapaciously deaf efficiency needs drivers to remain zero-hour, and “clients” to be as zero as any carer. It’s not zero-sum for him, but a sum of zeroes. It knocks on, as a huge inadvertent mistake – based on scant prepping – looms.
As does the ever-quickening tempo of the narrative, often cab-driven as it were, as connections between characters begin to form: like white-hot filaments or those illuminated chains, that bind in another way too. Ambrose, Pipe and Smith are all equally superb. Smith enjoys the greatest diversity, as beyond Bex and Gigi she’s Twix too. Additionally Smith introduces a Deus ex machina character towards the end, who could have been semaphored – if only glancingly – a couple of times before.
Movement Director Rose Ryan ensures this is a boppy and wild a performance on the floor as you can fit in the Little. There’s a disco beat where David Lewington’s sound morphs from ambient traffic through to techno-clubbing with bass as Jack and Tia, or Tamara and Gigi, get some partying and sightseeing in.
Is the ending a little too uplifting? Deaths arrive not quite where you’re led to expect them, though there’s dark too. And a satisfying pay-off nearly everywhere. It’s a thrilling ride as scenes flick and segue on a head-twist. Wilkinson delights in denser textures than Union, with more actors, and the velocity of his stagecraft is exhilarating. This paean to the mass of gig workers who slave in precarity to make London buzz 24/7 is timely, personal, and a battle-cry with nuance: not easy to bring off. The late Mark Fisher wrote in 2009 at the dawn of the gig economy his manifesto: Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? He’d be pleased to see the emphatic answer here.
Casting Director Fran Cataneo Production manager Emma Langan, Stage Manager Venus raven, PR Gingerbread Agency, Marketing Cup of Ambition, Producer Clarisse Makundul.
