On billboards in the underground at Waterloo, Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors, a keenly awaited show at the National, advertises itself as “a new play” by Gillian Slovo. But the drama itself is not new at all: this has been an uncontainable and continuing tragedy. Six years after the fire that killed 72 people on 14 June 2017 in the 24-storey residential tower in North Kensington, the inquiry has yet to publish its findings and construction companies have yet to be prosecuted for criminal liability. It is a catastrophe that remains scandalously unresolved, the inquiry’s conclusions not now expected until 2024.
There have been multiple responses to Grenfell from journalists and artists – Steve McQueen’s film Grenfell, Richard Norton-Taylor’s verbatim pieces Grenfell: Value Engineering and Grenfell: System Failure about the hearing and, as early as 2018, Andrew O’Hagan’s controversial essay in the London Review of Books that led to the question: who has the right to tell this story? Here is the sense in which Slovo’s play is new and important. It is not only that she uses the words of survivors; it’s that they are her collaborators. They were invited to read transcripts, take part in the film that ends the show, be their own editors. The result is an inquiry of the best sort – the most humane kind – on stage.
