There’s a quiet rage simmering at the National Theatre. Perhaps too quiet. At the end of Gillian Slovo’s new Grenfell Tower play, Grenfell: in the Words of Survivors, actors playing survivors silently lead the audience out of the playhouse and into the night. The cast hold versions of the papier-mache hearts that have come to symbolise the west London community’s solidarity in loss. As everyone shuffles out, the theatre’s concrete walls are bathed in green light.
It’s a theatrical gambit that gives playgoers a taste of the silent march that takes place on the 14th of every month around the streets at the base of the burnt-out tower, bringing hundreds of the bereaved, survivors and residents back together.
