The Cubic Theatre inside the London Transport Museum, Covent Garden, provides the most fitting venue for Natural Theatre Company’s The Truth About Harry Beck, which commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the man who designed what is possibly the world’s most famous and most used map, that is not a map but a diagram, as Harry Beck spent a great deal of time telling people.
A fascinating insight into the story of the ‘map’
Written and directed by Andy Burden, the play is a straightforward narrative of Harry’s life with a functional set by Sue Condie that serves as his office, his London residences and retirement home in the country. Ashley Christmas portrays his wife, Nora, and the various characters who impacted Beck’s life. Woven into the story are direct addresses and moments of audience participation that give it a slight immersive edge.
Christmas and Simon Snashall as Harry Beck give solid performances as the very ordinary working class couple whose lives became enveloped by Harry’s obsession. The first Tube map consisted of the various routes drawn onto a standard London road map. As a technical draughtsman Beck was accustomed to working on diagrams of circuits; simple straight lines that showed the layout and connecting points.That’s where the idea came from to convert the existing cramped, higgledy-piggledy map into a clear diagram.
They portray how their simple lives were overtaken by this project, for which he received scant reward, having signed away any rights to ownership; how he lived and breathed the task of perfecting the diagram while she worked around him trying to bring some sense of matrimonial normality to their childless lives.
The play gives an interesting insight into the story of the ‘map’. It's also a warning of how people’s passions can end up ruling their lives and the need to realise when the time comes to let go and call it a day.
