‘Tactical Questioning’ is the ninth instalment of the Tricycle’s long-running ‘Tribunal Plays’ series. Reuniting director Nicolas Kent with editor Richard Norton-Taylor, the show is culled from the public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa, an Iraqi citizen who died in British Army custody in 2003.
Its first hour is both exquisitely crafted and rather arid, being for the most part a parade of uncharismatic soldiers being asked broadly the same questions by Thomas Wheatley’s dignified Gerald Elias QC.
But if it feels at moments like watching a particularly genteel Premiership press conference, Norton-Taylor does painstakingly build up the picture of a confused, underprepared military, bereft of moral guidance, unsure on definitions of torture. It’s set up for the two interviews that comprise ‘Tactical Questioning’s devastating final sequence.
The unequivocal testimony of David Michael’s Lieutenant Colonel Mercer throws his fellow soldiers’ actions into ferocious relief: they broke the law, they lacked a moral compass. But the show’s coup de grace comes with Simon Rouse’s Adam Ingram MP, former Minister of State for the Armed Forces. A sucking moral void of a man, his sole motivation seems to be evading the admission of any responsibility at all: a terrifying quality in a politician, and a chilling indictment of modern British politics.