Review: The Legend of Ned Ludd at Liverpool Everyman ****

Times may change, centuries may pass, politics may intrude and geographical locations may shape it, but work, that exchange of time and labour for reward, remains a constant and dominating force in our lives.

Simply put, we work to live. Some of us also live to work – and how you choose to make your livelihood can become a defining part of who you are.

But what do we do and how do we protest when our work, and through it our own sense of place and worth, is threatened by forces beyond our control?

In the early 19th Century, automation sparked violent dissent among the textile workers who faced losing their livelihoods to the industrial revolution's new mechanised looms.

The Legend of Ned Ludd sees playwright Joe Ward Munrow takes that Luddite movement and create a rough narrative framework around which he weaves an ambitious piece of theatre which offers a unique and thought-provoking experience – albeit one aptly taken out of both actors’ and audiences’ hands.

Instead, it’s left to an automated algorithm to (apparently randomly) choose what the nimble three-strong cast - Reuben Johnson, Menyee Lai and Shaun Mason - perform, with the play having a calculated 256 different permutations.

Think a childhood ‘choose your own adventure’ book meets lottery machine.

Above: Reuben Johnson and Shaun Mason. Top: Menyee Lai. Photos by Marc Brenner.

While nowhere near 256 permutations, my own cranial computer might have produced a slightly different review immediately after seeing the play.

Because Munrow’s singular storytelling mosaic needs some distance from which to digest it, to see the emerging patterns and conversations, and to appreciate and admire the detail in its seemingly (and occasionally frustratingly) fragmented design.

Beginning, ending and sporadically returning to the Nottingham of 1816, its simmering visits to the era are interspersed with global vignettes including on press night the quiet despair of workers facing an uncertain future in the 2016 Detroit motor industry, the agency of a balloon seller in 90s Ecuador, and – a true story - the oppression of prisoners forced to play hours of computer games to build up currency for guards to swap for real money in the China of 2015.

Above: Marx and Engels meet in Paris to philosophise about the division of labour. Photo by Marc Brenner.

Lai and Mason charm in a visit to the Liverpool of 1985 where the former’s master craftsman tries to impart his passion for proper painting and decorating skills to the latter’s lackadaisical apprentice, while there’s also an entertaining stop off in Paris 1844 where Marx and Engels expound their economic philosophies and discuss the division of labour over a bottle of red.

As the cast, addressing their audience, point out in the play’s final minutes - some stories are open, some stories are closed. Some stories have endings that are inevitable.

Some, it also has to be said, are more digestible or have more dramatic impact than others.

But Munrow’s unconventional, inventive and at times powerful piece certainly gets the Everyman’s 60th birthday year off to a stimulating start.