Understated and affecting interrogation of the causes of the 2017 fire
Following on from their sombre 2021 docudrama Grenfell: Value Engineering, journalist Richard Norton-Taylor and director Nicolas Kent have compiled a second verbatim account of the ongoing public inquiry into the disaster that left 72 people dead. This time, the focus is on the systemic failures of oversight and accountability that contributed to the tragedy. In listening to these testimonies, it is repeatedly implied that dangers were identified but never put right; that the inconvenient results of fire-safety tests were ignored; and that corporations took advantage of regulatory loopholes to avoid the expense of upgrading the dangerous materials that they supplied.
Between the flat denials from corporate representatives and the politicians’ buck-passing platitudes, we also hear some powerfully moving statements from survivors of the blaze, which were conspicuously absent from the preceding play. Kent’s minimal staging lets the words speak for themselves. There is nothing ostentatious here, no distractions from the stark picture presented to us. The piece has a stately, subdued power, treating its subject with the gravity it self-evidently deserves, without feeling exploitative.
A neutral, realistic set by Miki Jablkowska and Matt Eagland faithfully recreates the room in which these conversations took place, with its muted blue walls, a few desks and monitors on which transcripts of the actual testimonies are displayed with significant paragraphs highlighted. Reprising his role as Richard Millett QC, Ron Cook is a steady, hyper-focused presence, calmly presenting the facts and scrutinising his witnesses with poised precision. The most dramatic moments come during his questioning of former secretary of state for communities Eric Pickles. Howard Crossley’s Pickles is pompous and evasive, wobbling between puffing up his own ego and trotting out banalities about taking responsibility while refuting any suggestion that he, personally, could have done anything to avert the tragedy.
Elsewhere, David Michaels is strong as London Fire Brigade commissioner Andy Roe, one of the few authority figures prepared to admit that mistakes were made. He is deeply shaken by the system-wide problems that the inquiry has exposed, rightly calling the conditions that led to the disaster and the shambolic response to it “the most appalling example of institutional failure in recent British history”.
The piece is bookended by excerpts from the testimony of Hisam Choucair, who lost six members of his family to the fire. Shahzad Ali portrays Choucair with great sensitivity, delivering his words with quiet dignity but allowing flickers of grief and outrage to show through. In his closing remarks, he expresses a hope that lessons will be learned. But with the inquiry’s final report not expected until the end of 2023, that process has still barely begun.
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