The National Theatre’s new Grenfell drama is terrifying and enraging — review

Grenfell: in the words of survivors

National Theatre, London

“It was just my safest space,” says Turufat, as she recalls the flat that became home for her when she fled political unrest in Ethiopia. Her words ring out with a terrible irony because that flat would prove to be anything but safe. Turufat lived on the seventh floor of Grenfell Tower, which was destroyed by fire in June 2017: the worst residential fire in the UK since the second world war.

It was a national scandal: 72 people lost their lives, hundreds (including Turufat) were displaced overnight — the scale of the tragedy a direct consequence of the cheap combustible cladding that had been affixed to the exterior of the 24-storey tower in north Kensington. The public inquiry has yet to publish its findings, with the Crown Prosecution Service awaiting those findings before considering criminal charges.

An earlier verbatim play, Value Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry, showcased the shameful lack of accountability. Drawing on the public inquiry, it detailed the shocking chain of events leading up to the inferno: the deregulation, cost-cutting, buck-passing and incompetence that meant no one paid heed to the potential catastrophic human cost of light-touch regulation and bureaucratic inadequacy.

Grenfell: in the words of survivors, also a verbatim drama, is, in a sense, a sister piece to that work: it gives the floor to the voices of the people affected by those decisions and by the long wait for justice. And like Value Engineering, it is a superb piece of testimonial theatre and a quietly devastating indictment of policy and priorities. Writer Gillian Slovo spent years talking to survivors: the piece is composed entirely of their words — save for a few extracts from the inquiry and salient interviews with politicians — and has been staged with their collaboration.

So we hear from residents, played here by actors, who talk to us first about what life was like in the tower: their sense of community, their affection for the area, but also their growing anger as their warnings about the refurbishment plans went unheeded. “To predict something is going to happen and have it happen and not be able to stop it: there’s no words for that,” says resident Ed Daffarn.

The creative team has deliberately avoided sensationalism. There are no images of the fire; Georgia Lowe’s set for the production by Phyllida Lloyd and Anthony Simpson-Pike is a near empty central space, encircled by the audience. But the personal testimonies are harrowing: the terrifying confusion, the black wall of smoke, the banisters too hot to touch, the desperate phone calls, one resident scrabbling for his son’s swimming goggles to protect his eyes, another dropping her protective damp towel as she clings on to her baby.

It’s desperately moving and deeply enraging. But this is a drama that is about more than empathy: it’s about change. The end of the piece embraces the audience in an act of solidarity but also urges them to scrutinise their own part in the society that delivered this tragedy and to seek justice. In a short film, real survivors address the audience directly. One quotes the philosopher Cornel West: “Justice is what love looks like in public.”

★★★★★

To August 26, nationaltheatre.org.uk

Union

Arcola Theatre, London

Developers are back in the spotlight in Max Wilkinson’s new play Union, which traces a personal crisis in the life of his fictitious protagonist Saskia, successful 34-year-old property developer for a firm that specialises in gentrification. As we meet her, she’s bouncing about in her skin-tight Lycra, inviting the audience to admire her toned physique: “Look at me. Like polished oak.”

It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to work out that all is not well with Saskia and sure enough, we soon learn that she has just bolted out of one of the biggest meetings of her career and is now running along London’s Grand Union Canal, assailed by her conscience and by girlhood memories of a friend she abandoned at a crucial moment.

Her personal odyssey is interrupted by individuals she meets along the way, many of whom have been affected by the sort of projects she delivers, by phone calls from her increasingly frantic boss, and by memories that challenge her about what she stands for.

Wilkinson’s sparky script is at its best when being acidly funny. It is delivered with wit and bite in Wiebke Green’s production by Dominique Tipper as Saskia, and by Andre Bullock and Sorcha Kennedy, who play all the other parts with great skill. Less successful is the decision to tie Saskia’s crisis about her work with her guilt about her friend: it has the effect of turning the drama inward, on her, rather than focusing fully on what is a matter of serious public debate about the future of our cities.

★★★☆☆

To August 12, arcolatheatre.com

The Sound of Music

Chichester Festival Theatre, Chichester, West Sussex

For many of us, The Sound of Music is forever associated with the 1965 film’s opening images of Julie Andrews’ Maria spinning, arms outspread, amid the Austrian alps. Not to be outdone, Gina Beck begins her performance in this staging of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical by singing the opening number while lying flat on her back. It’s an unconventional approach. But then that’s very Maria — a free spirit whose attempts to become a nun are confounded by her irrepressible sense of fun.

The significance of that desire for freedom is skilfully foregrounded in Adam Penford’s new production. Once Maria is sent to try her hand as governess to naval officer Captain von Trapp’s seven children, the urge to rebel takes on a much more serious note. This is Salzburg, 1938. When Hitler’s forces move across the border, the family must conform or flee. There’s a real chill when huge Nazi banners suddenly drop down all over the auditorium, SS officers appear in the aisles, and the seven children thread their way through the audience with their possessions on their backs. This, the staging quietly reminds us, is what refugees look like.

It’s scarcely a radical production, however. Where other recent revivals of classic musicals have reframed the originals, this one remains solidly faithful, trusting in the basic, uplifting narrative of individual conscience. It works well, touching on contemporary resonances without pushing them, and driven by Beck’s glowing Maria. She brings a soaring, beautiful soprano, an irresistible energy and a mischievous defiance to the part and soon has the children, the captain and the audience in the palm of her hand.

Edward Harrison as Captain von Trapp has the tough job of crafting a full person out of a set of principles. But his performance brings a lump to your throat when he struggles to get through “Edelweiss” at the crucial, final concert, and there’s cracking work from Janis Kelly as the wise Mother Abbess who proves Nazis are no match for nuns.

★★★★☆

To September 3, cft.org.uk