Interview with Max Wilkinson about Night City (Southwark Playhouse)

By Kimberley Andrews.

Originally published on 4 September 2026 on the London Playwrights blog. Dates, offers and references reflect the original article.

Playwright, Max Wilkinson’s new play, Night City, is running at Southwark Playhouse from 10th September to 3rd October. We caught up with him to find out more about the show and what inspired the idea…

Can you tell us what Night City is about?

Night City is an epic new drama about the hilarious highs and devastating lows of London’s gig economy. It follows a hedonistic taxi driver, a waitress with big dreams, and a carer with a big heart who makes a fatal error one night, plunging all their lives into chaos. And a political conspiracy that they will never forget. It’s an epic tale of love, loss and laughter and how we might stand more united against corruption and a strange future.

Who will like this show?

People who like their theatre to be big and explosive and cinematic. We’ve got movement, singing, a big clubby soundtrack. People who like a tapestry of different characters and stories and lots of laughs until the laughter stops and the play becomes this big political story of David and Goliath. Of small, disparate voices against corporate greed.

Me and Ebenezer Bamgboye, our director, love shows that are not just debate pieces, that get out of the room, are explosive. With Night City we wanted to create something that grips you from the beginning and never lets you go. And we’ve got such a fantastic cast in Helena Pipe, Jack Ambrose and Bex Smith!

What inspired the show?

So, on a bus back at night on the Old Kent Road about 8 years ago, I saw the aftermath of an accident on the Bricklayer’s Arms junction where a delivery driver had been smashed by a truck. The bike was still lying there, glass scattered all over the place, but the body had gone. This is the first image of Night City.

Why is this a political story, and what are the characters fighting against?

So the three core characters all work in the gigging sector and react to it very differently. Jack, the taxi driver, actually loves it as he doesn’t sleep and loves his booze and drugs and partying so treats it like a game, racking up fares and cash and sexual encounters. Whereas Tia, a waitress, is a budding writer and has newly arrived in London and thinks she can turn her new job at essentially a cafe Nero into a Parisian cafe from the 20s. And Tamara, a home-carer, has a big heart and loves to find humour in the stories of her many patients.

But then they are all oppressed and antagonised in different and similar ways: whether it’s Jack’s app listening to him and quelling a plot to unionise after his friend is left dead on the road; Tia being fired again and again for trying to show some humanity in a job that otherwise oppresses it or a sinister force buying Tamara’s care company which forces her to make a fatal error: they all rebel or falter from sinister forces differently, but with the same kind of humanity.

Because that’s what Night City is essentially about: finding humanity and individualism in a new, weird working world that otherwise can potentially suffocate it. And a broader picture of society that’s maybe going the same way.

Did you touch on any of your own experiences for this? How did you research?

I’ve always been interested in work. Growing up we didn’t have much money so me and my brothers always had to find jobs. My first job was at 8 or 9 years old stacking cans in a corner shop which was possibly illegal but I was very grateful for that. Then used to dog walk, sell Kit Kats out of my bag at school and Pokemon cards. And then Super Drug, tree surgeon, crewing, service jobs: anything really.

I was pretty rubbish at all of them but they paid the bills and meant I could always spy on people and see so many different characters and perspectives. So I’ve always been interested in modern working culture: how precarious it is, how digitised and anonymous, how absurd and funny, and how it lets you into all these different worlds and perspectives.

And I poured all of those experiences into the play. But also my aunt worked as a home carer in a very toxic health company; my cousin is a nurse and used both of them as references but also interviewed a lot of people over the years working in different aspects of the gigging sector.

What do you want people to take away from the show?

Talking about all the political stuff the play maybe sounds very heavy and maybe worthy but really it’s about music and movement and characters and stories, and joy and laughter in the face of oppressive forces. The gig economy is our new world, the play doesn’t condemn that; it just tries to record that and all the absurdity it can bring.

But ultimately it’s a big theatrical experience that we want you to be immersed in and hopefully think about long after.

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Night City runs from from 10th September – 3rd October 2026.at Southwark Playhouse. Get your tickets here.