By the middle of the 19th century Bradford had become the worsted capital of the world. Towering civic buildings arose in the centre, the chimneys of textile mills towered on the outskirts, and the back-to-back slums of the workers lay between. A century on the industry was collapsing, the mills closed down and buildings once filled with the cacophony of looms became empty hulks, haunts of memories and mice.
Drummonds was one of the last to close, and is the setting for what is essentially a trip down Memory Mill. Geoff Leesley, in the role of Frank, caretaker of the empty building, leads us into the vast and shadowy weaving shed where ghostly figures emerge from the dark and do things that are hard or impossible to interpret but presumably have to do with weaving.
After this puzzling overture the stories begin, focusing chiefly on the experience of three immigrant workers arriving from Eastern Europe, Italy and India, bewildered by a new environment but animated by the dream (hence the subtitle) of eventual success.
The stories are engrossing. Almost all the items used in this promenade production, including uniforms and lengths of cloth, were found on site and the stories emerged from the memories of former workers. Shaped and written by Madani Younis, Omar Elerian and Jonathan Holmes, and directed by the first two for Freedom Studios, the stories look sometimes on the bright side of work in the 1950s and 1960s, but harshness always breaks through.
We see Raffaella Gardon’s Maria mastering the skill of burling, though I’d like to have been told this meant removing unwanted knots in the cloth. The miming is presumably accurate but unclear to those of us who have never burled. A comic episode shows immigrants having their photos taken to send home, wearing suits and watches made available by the photographer to give the impression of the success that was actually slow in coming.
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The step by step closure, affecting an entire community, is poignantly done, and the relationship between Maria and Frank I found most moving. Dramatising a society in this manner before memories slide beyond recovery can be, as here, a powerful experience.
Box office: 01274 432000, to April 16