Theatre

The inquest into the shooting of the  Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes lasted for ten weeks and returned an open verdict. Kieron Barry’s edited transcripts run 90 minutes straight through, and present a rather less equivocal case. Performed by a cast of eight on a bare stage, ‘Stockwell’ takes hours of tedious proceedings and turns them into a gripping  courtroom drama. We are taken moment by moment through the events in the hour or so leading to the shooting. Evidence and testimonies are intercut and arranged chronologically so that it feels like the morning is being retold in nigh-on real time from multiple perspectives.

There are drawbacks to this approach. The actors are each playing five or six characters, and there’s little hope of following who’s who. Moreover, since actors remain broadly within one type of character – one is several lawyers, others several policemen – one gets a generalised sense of what went wrong, but not of individual culpability, while Sophie Lifschutz’s meticulous direction occasionally feels a little too action-led.  

For the most part, though, this is excellent, elegantly prosecuted work. As with all verbatim drama, one wonders about what has been missed out, but for all its omissions and possible partiality, the picture of ineptitude culminating in an inexorable rush toward tragedy is as gripping as it is chilling. Indeed, such is the level of very English bungling that it would be almost funny if the outcome weren’t so appalling.