In two senses, this debut play by Harry Davies has a lot going on offstage. Previews were extended to allow the show, according to a theatre statement, “to reach its full potential”. And in writing about a public inquiry into a contaminated water scandal, Davies clearly alludes to the poisoned spa baths in Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, but also follows the Norwegian’s practice of crucial events having occurred before the action. The Inquiry, though, stretches the technique by starting after both the scandal and the public hearings are over.
The play’s 100 minutes focus on the process of “Maxwellisation” that allows witnesses to challenge and redact criticisms before a report’s publication. Justice minister Arthur Gill (John Heffernan) hopes to steer inquiry chair Lady Justice Wingate (Deborah Findlay) away from conclusions that might stymie his prime ministerial ambitions, which are also threatened by the interest of newspaper profile-writer Elyse (Shazia Nicholls) in his well-guarded past.
