This Grenfell drama demands to be seen
Value Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry Tabernacle, London W11
The Grenfell Tower fire of June 14 2017 shocked the world, and shocks us still. In the heart of an affluent borough in one of the richest cities on earth, 72 people died in horrific, almost indescribable circumstances. Value Engineering – Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry, an edited verbatim selection of the testimonies given in the ongoing £117 million public inquiry, isn’t the first theatrical response to the disaster, but it’s the most substantial. Journalist Richard Norton-taylor and director Nicolas Kent’s compelling precis of what has been gleaned about contributory failures proves essential viewing – a reminder, in its methodical integrity, of theatre’s vital civic role.
There were complaints in some quarters when the project was announced that it wasn’t for two ageing white men to tackle a subject that didn’t just lay bare chronic social inequality but had a racial component, too – the majority of the residents who died were people of colour.
The location, at the Tabernacle, Notting Hill (not at the smaller Playground theatre nearby, which is co-presenting the work), is within distant sight of the tower, but it’s also in leafy Richard Curtis-land. Yet Norton-taylor and Kent have experience in this form – blazing a trail in the 1990s at the then Tricycle (now the Kiln), in Kilburn, with reconstructions of the Scott (Arms to Iraq) inquiry, the war crimes tribunal about the Srebrenica massacre and the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.
They end the first half with a searing speech by Leslie Thomas QC, delivered in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and fiercely alluding to it. Further, by focusing on phase two of the evidence, and presenting a roll-call of key parties bound up with the tragedy – all of whom are white – they make it plain who called the shots, and who suffered the results.
Legally, the inquiry benefits from significant disclosure from individuals and companies on the basis that they can’t incriminate themselves. In a theatrical context, it feels far more as if the audience can sit in judgement – we’re in a mock-up hearing room with desks and display monitors. Those called to account range from the refurbishing company, cladding subcontractor and architect, to representatives of the Tenants Management Organisation and local-authority building control. Each is incarnated with due attention to accents, attitudes, tics and tactics. Sympathy is often expressed for the victims, some even weep – how much credence should we give that remorse?
Audience feelings are bound to run high but the prevailing mood is one of sober appraisal. Thomas Wheatley – a plausible lookalike – is the intently listening chair Sir Martin Moorebick. But the master of ceremonies, as it were, is Ron Cook as the inquiry’s dogged, impressive counsel Richard Millett QC, who – with Marple-like assiduity – alights on inconsistencies, video-highlights bombshell bits of evidence and unpicks his interlocutors’ cladding of complacency, obfuscation and denial.
Each will draw their own conclusions about what they hear – the mistakes made, deals done, the web of intersecting ineptness, responsibility-ducking negligence and worse. What emerges isn’t just how shoddy housing-sector construction and maintenance can be, but widespread systemic rottenness. A troubling moral deficit is evidenced by sloppy, self-serving language, “value engineering” being the perfect case in point, a furtive phrase to denote corner-cutting on costs. You may go in anticipating a useful adjunct to the inquiry, but you will leave persuaded you’re in the realm of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People or Priestley’s An Inspector Calls. This is state-of-the-nation stuff; we’re all implicated.
Until Nov 13. Tickets: grenfellvalueengineering.com. Then at Birmingham Rep, Nov 16-20: birmingham-rep.co.uk