Writer: Max Wilkinson
Director: Ebenezer Bamgboye
Writer Max Wilkinson lays it on thick in his study of three people trying to survive the gig economy. There is one pregnancy, two dodgy hearts and three deaths; one fatal allergy, two car crashes, and three hospitals; and not least, one miraculous recovery. Outside of medical emergencies, there is industrial whistleblowing, sexual harassment and company takeovers. All of these issues come to a head in a final American-style court case. It’s all too dramatic.
Jack Ambrose plays Jack, a taxi driver for a company called GoGo Cars. He likes the flexibility of zero-hours contracts, but sympathises with his colleagues who demand regular hours and sick pay. One night, he picks up Tia (Bex Smith), newly arrived in London. A would-be writer, Tia gets a job in a Soho café called Evita. She’s quickly sacked for being too nice to Soho’s waifs and strays. She signs up with a catering agency.
Meanwhile, Helena Pipe’s nurse, Tamara, finds her job increasingly difficult when the owner of GoGo Cars buys out the care agency she works for. As the allotted time she spends on each visit is cut, Tamara struggles to care for her patients: tellingly, her new boss refers to them as ‘customers.’ In one of the show’s few coincidences, Tamara is tasked with caring for her boss’s elderly mother, who hasn’t left her house in years.
The three actors also play a range of other characters, too. Smith is the impossibly grand Gigi, the old woman who Tamara looks after. Smith and Pipe also play Twitch and Ibrahim, fellow drivers of Jack’s at GoGo Cars. Ambrose is a creepy literary agent. All three take turns to play the overly slimy Company Director who wears a baseball cap in the style of Elon Musk.
Saving the play somewhat is Olivia Jamieson’s set design. Chains hang down from the ceiling, and bright lights are entwined within them. They flash blindingly when Jack and Tia go dancing in a club, and moodily when Tamara sings karaoke. Occasionally, the nighttime streets of London are projected onto the back wall.
Wilkinson’s script is occasionally poetic, but too many plots are packed into 80 minutes, and Night City’s determination to come up with a resolution, involving an AI bot, seems a little desperate.
Runs until 3 October 2026
