Oh Well Never Mind Bye

Taking the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes as its starting point, Steven Lally's new play rapidly builds into a relentless, meticulous critique of how the British media fails. At the same time, it's got proper characters and a cracking storyline. The play begins on 21st July 2005, with four journalists in a newsroom attempting to provide coverage of the failed second set of terrorist attacks in London. Running alongside is a flashback concerning one of the journalists witnessing the shooting of a Palestinian youth at a demonstration on the West Bank. Rather than making explicit comment, the play concentrates on the limitations of Britain's under-resourced mgedia and the linguistic minefield within which it operates. Meanwhile, stories come second hand from Press Association wires or official statements from the police. Tom Mansfield's excellently acted production astutely uses the Union's intimate space in-the-round. The play's title, a quote from graffiti scrawled over a picture of de Menezes at his shrine outside Stockwell Tube station, becomes an epitaph for British journalism.