The inquisitorial plays of Richard Norton-Taylor and Nicolas Kent have altered the theatrical landscape – and changed minds. Most overtly political drama deals in opinions. Kent and Norton-Taylor deliver facts. Staging actual trials and tribunals, using words from transcripts, this least theatrical of theatre-making can discomfort in multiple ways: performances are so transparent it can be hard to know if an actor is struggling for breath or stumbling over forgotten words.
Grenfell: System Failure is the second reenactment of evidence from the public inquiry into the fire. (The first, Grenfell: Value Engineering, premiered in 2021.) Staged minutes away from the tower, it is an uncompromising evening. The setting is bland, corporate: a dark screen and light wood desks. The legal team are focused, unrhetorical: Thomas Wheatley’s chairman drills calmly into witness statements; as the QCs, Ron Cook is unimpressible, undeviating, Sally Giles exacting and exasperated. Much of the two and a half hours is made up of technical evidence about cladding and insulation. The detail mounts, numbingly: the dryness makes survivors’ accounts the more lacerating. Stumbling down the stairs in black smoke, a woman saw by the light of her son’s mobile phone that she was treading not on hosepipes but on hands.
