Union

The city is sweet and summered and partly asleep. The city is angry. And tonight: one of us is going to die.

On the eve of the biggest deal of her career, Saskia, an uber-successful property developer runs from the meeting, all the way home down the Grand Union Canal. Plagued by phone calls and ghosts, she meets a myriad of characters looking to make or break her. She realises, as her shiny life unravels, that she doesn’t know herself anymore or the city she once loved. Can she still save a little piece of it?

From the award-winning, Offie-nominated writer of Rainer, Max Wilkinson’s Union is a wildly hilarious odyssey through London, in all its brilliant, booze-soaked yuppified but still punk glory. Just as Saskia fears she is losing her own soul to greed, it’s about the fear that London is losing that same battle but is still defined by a beautiful beating heart and the people who live in it. Born from creative workshops led for several years by Max with local communities across London, Union is a black comedy, a love letter and a passionate call to arms.

This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at the Arcola Theatre, London, in July 2023.

Max Wilkinson is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter, fascinated with characters trying to navigate an increasingly absurd world. He has won the Screen to Screen Award, the Paris Prix and was a finalist for the Nick Drake Award, Theatre Uncut’s Political Playwriting Award, Samuel French’s Off-Broadway Awards and was recently nominated for an Off West Award. He has had work staged at Theatre 503, the Arcola, Paines Plough, the King’s Head and many others. He was commissioned by Pennway Productions for his first large budget feature film Ghost Fruit, and his critically-acclaimed play, Rainer played at the Arcola Theatre in summer 2022 and has been commissioned by BBC Radio 4