A fun proposal and good intentions do not a great theatre show make.
Good intentions will keep an audience on side, but that’s not enough to move them. When your crowd is standing in the mud and the rain, this is a problem.
Babel, a promenade performance staged impressively in Islington’s Caledonian Park by the BAC and Wildworks, tells the story of a community forcibly evicted by the cops. There’s a campsite filled with pretty tents and fun things to do, so it all feels a bit like Secret Garden Party. Throw in biblical references, abseiling and dozens of amateur performances, and you’ve got a fun proposal.
But that’s it, really. Despite implicit references to Dale Farm, refugees and squatting, the story is Hollywood schlock. One ordinary man must stand up for what’s right against the big, bad guy while a mother and daughter wait to be saved, entirely passively. We ended up the same way.
The production is supposed to create a sense of unity, but we only saw an image of it—and that, frankly, was a cliché. A simple story might have been ideal, but only if the audience could have been more involved. The “evicted refugees” stood in a circle that we weren’t invited to join, and when it seemed we could start fighting the cops, the actors made sure we didn’t.
Sometimes the visuals made up for that political muddle. Our introductory wander through the park was full of gorgeous, witty images. Two that stood out especially were a trumpeter slumped into a tree trunk and the perfectly lit tableau of a woman drawing at a desk. The park’s clock tower looked awesome, and clever use of projection let the story progress inside. But this show has the potential to let the audience stage a revolution, only that would have disrupted the story. 
Babel runs at Caledonian Park until 20th May
Related Articles:
Three Kingdoms at Lyric Hammersmith
The Conquest of the South Pole at Arcola Theatre
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