A JOURNEY OF JOURNEYS
A map is a lovely thing, but sometimes practically speaking a diagram is better. And can also be lovely: especially when its useful elegance has become a familiar part of home. Such is the London Underground diagram: designed initially by Harry Beck (who preferred to be called Henry), for a time appearing under another name to his great chagrin, but now once more honouring him with a tiny inscription at the bottom: “After an idea by Harry C Beck”.
The story of its creation is being told in this playful, touching 65-minute play in the tiny Cubic Theatre underneath the London Transport Museum: as one player says, “the twisting story of a simple thing”.
Happening to be in Covent Garden on a Sunday, I wandered into the roiling mass of confused tourists , since I note that it has extended to January with well-earned plaudits for the Natural Theatre Company’s wistful nostalgic take on the story.
Simon Snashall from The IT Crowd on TV normally takes the part, but on my day he was replaced by John Gregor, and I cannot imagine any more charming depiction: in a tank top, balding and bespectacled, he delicately draws the portrait of one of the Great British Nerds, a decent unassuming man focused more on his work than his image. Alongside him Ashley Christmas plays his wife and chief narrator, Nora (admitting she had to do the proposing).
Andy Burden’s neat script (he also directs) takes their story from Beck’s unassuming beginnings, anxious for work in the hungry 1930’s, through courtship and marriage to retirement, all in retrospect. It happens on the sweetest of sets: draughtsmans desk, ,hatstand armchair, teapot, a screen behind suggesting the ghostly fact of the winding London Thames. He was first an draughtsman apprentice in the Signals department of London transport, drawing electronics diagrams all straight lines and connections. “He likes patterns” says Nora, and Beck had always shaking his head at the way that once they’re actually built, electrical systems end up as a jumble of wire spaghetti.
He moved on to draw some Underground posters – classics every one, on sale upstairs on a dozen mugs and T-shirts. And between them, he and Nora saw that while people at work may go from A to B on a familiar line, some also want to roam around the great city and see new places. They need to know how to change line. But as the system of lines had grown fast, built by different companies, the map became a terrible mess (worth looking that up, here’s a nice one https://www.alteagallery.com/products/london/london-transport-maps/a-pre-beck-map-of-londons-underground-railways/).
So , grabbing a red ribbon from Nora’s sewing-basket to make the Central Line, Beck picked up next a purple one, a green one, a blue one, a black one…pinning them from lamp-stand to wall to floor in a maypole jungle, getting an audience member to hold down the end of the Northern Line with his foot . And he began clothespegging the junctions together. And settled down to draw it in neat lines.
In 1933, only mildly impressed, London Transport agreed to put it out on a series of little portable maps. And people, of course, loved it.
The story of his revisions, obsession, and arguments carries on, economically done (“ooh – top left – a bit spiky – smooth it out..”) Nora’s narrative neatly points out how the years fled by, invention by invention – cats eyes, nylon, spam, aerosols, helicopters, dialysis – while Harry revised and revised and re-designed.
And then furiously found that his old verbal contract wasn’t waterproof..and it came out a bit vandalized by someone called Hutchinson. And Nora had to calm him down. But he’s there on the credits now, and celebrated in the little theatre. Like his diagram, it’s a neat and elegant delight.
ltmuseum.co.uk to 5 jan
rating 4
theatreCat 