Review: Babel, Caledonian Park

Written for Culture Wars

Only the spirit in which Babel was conceived saves it from being irredeemible. In its execution, it ranks as a failure on all fronts, most significantly on the grounds that it fans the very cynicism that it sets out to counter.

Created by Wildworks, the team behind The Passion of Port Talbot, Babel is a large-scale community project that seeks to draw out the positive message in the biblical narrative that provides its title. The attempt to build a tower to the heavens is usually framed as a hubristic act, punished by God when he scatters humanity around the globe and introduces language. Wildworks reconceive it from a humanist persective; that together we can achieve great things.

To pull off such tardy inspirational banalities one needs to do something inspiring. That’s the secret of Royal de Luxe and their giant urban spectacles. Wildworks know this. Port Talbot’s Passion had it in spades. You can see what they’re trying to do with Babel, but unfortunately it falls a long way short. It’s only fair to chart the unlucky breaks, which include losing Battersea Power Station (for all that the Caledonian Park clocktower looks great, its no iconic landmark), managing only a community cast of around 300 and, on press night at least, weather conditions that ruled out the aerial spectacles. This was not an artistic failure. It was a logistical one.

That Wildworks have never qualified the work is to their credit. However, great artists can make something extraordinary out of the most basic components.

Two things hit you almost as soon as you walk into Caledonian Park. One is the overbearing smell of burning paraffin. The other is the sickly stench of hippyish platitudes and synthetic good will.

The journey is one from individuals to tribles to a whole. It has three phases. First a walk through the park’s paths, lined with individuals engaged in sol activities: reading, writing, singing – always to themselves. Second, group performances, choirs and bands and knitting units (who have created a woollen London) and third, in the shadow of the clocktower, the performance proper.

Here we are the people, gathered at the foot of the tower, which is – apparently – calling to us. The security forces – dressed vaguely like American cops – demand that we move back and disperse. They tear down ‘our’ bamboo houses (made during phase two) and one man – a husband and father – refuses to budge. There’s a sprinkling of Occupy and a dash of Gaze in this and, to be honest, it’s hard not to begrudge it, on account of its heavyhandedness. Everything within is a clunking cipher.

At this level, Babel sits somewhere between a straight play to be watched and immersive theatre. It feels rather like a ritual enactment and, because it never persuades us to invest in that ritual, it remains vaguely risible. There are halfhearted pantomime boos and mock protests, but it cannot be taken seriously. In fact, the closest we get to community is in our shared smirks and rolled eyes. Nothing brings an audience together like bad theatre.


Photograph: Steve Tanner