Moral conundrum – you be the jury
An out-of-control goods train is hurtling towards a stationary one that is carrying hundreds of passengers. You can divert the train into a siding, but five engineers are there working on the track. Do you save the five men or the far more numerous passengers?
If this perhaps seems relatively straightforward, here’s another conundrum: same goods train, same passenger train, but this time no sidings. Instead, you are on a bridge next to a very fat man. If you push the man on to the track, you will stop the goods train. But to do that you’re going to have to kill him first. Still straightforward? Ferdinand von Schirach’s interactive courtroom drama, a global hit, pivots on precisely these sorts of after-dinner ethical brain twisters. Fighter pilot Lars Koch is in the dock for shooting down, against orders, a hijacked passenger jet that was heading straight for a packed football stadium. He killed 164 people but, we’re told, saved 70,000. He’s in breach of the German constitution, which insists one life must never be weighed against that of another. But is he morally guilty of murdering those passengers? We, the audience, have to decide.
Sean Holmes’s simply staged production revels in the rituals of a courtroom, with its shuffling of papers and ominously clanging door. Emma Fielding’s stiletto-sharp prosecution counsel, who uses the aforementioned train dilemma to reinforce the notion of human dignity as an inviolable ethical principle, coolly fends off Forbes Masson’s pugilistic defence lawyer, who argues that a post-9/11 world demands a new moral paradigm. Leading proceedings briskly, sometimes impatiently, is Tanya Moodie’s gimlet-eyed presiding judge.
Legal eagles might be frustrated by some of the arguments omitted here: the 70,000 deaths are presented as an axiomatic outcome of the plane crashing into the stadium, for example, which seems a bit of a leap. None the less, von Schirach’s play taps into theatre’s long tradition as a democratic art form fundamentally concerned with notions of justice and jurisprudence. Should a greater good win out against an abstract moral certainty? Should an individual conscience take precedence over the ruling of a state? More specific, unanswered questions also linger over the culpability of official institutions. Why wasn’t the stadium evacuated? Is the German air force offering up Koch as a sacrificial lamb? This play is more interesting to think about than it is to watch. The drama lies not on stage but in your snapping synapses as a member of the audience in control of the verdict. Ultimately, it’s a parlour game masquerading as an ancient Greek tragedy. Still, worth seeing? You decide.
Until Jul 15. Tickets 020 8741 6822; lyric.co.uk