Theatre in Review: Grenfell: in the words of survivors (National Theatre at St. Ann's Warehouse)

	Houda Echouafni. Photo: Teddy Wolff

Grabbing a bite before the theatre the other evening, I read "Time's Up," Sam Knight's devastating assessment of what years of successive Conservative governments have done to the UK. (It's in the April 1 issue of The New Yorker and you shouldn't miss it.) In Knight's assessment, the one-punch of Brexit and austerity has bled the country dry. Among his findings: The UK never recovered from the 2008 global economic crisis. Workers' wages are, in real terms, significantly lower than before that event. The citizenry's overall health has declined; rickets is once again prevalent. The police are seriously underfunded, and a staggering percentage of the country's courts have been closed. George Osborne, former chancellor of the exchequer under David Cameron, is quoted as saying, '"It's a bit like tractor-production figures in the Soviet Union. You have to sort of pretend that this thing is working, and everyone in the system knows it isn't." It is sobering food for thought.

And then I saw Grenfell: in the words of survivors.

Gillian Slovo's documentary drama is a vivid account of a horrific event -- the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London -- populated with real-life characters who come fully alive onstage. Beyond that, it crystallizes the havoc imposed on society by rampant inequality and governmental neglect. The UK is supposed to be one of the wealthiest and most civilized nations on earth, but the Grenfell fire, the response to it, and the response to it are the sorts of things that happen in failed states.

The slightly drier first half, which details how a model council housing project was allowed to wither, is offset by the vibrant personalities of the survivors. (Slovo's script is drawn from interviews and a variety of found elements.) By all accounts, the early years at Grenfell are idyllic: Residents leave their doors open, children mingle and play on landings, and neighbors look after one another. The population is a mirror of modern multicultural London: Living together, side by side, are emigrants from Portugal, Italy, the Middle East, and the Caribbean, along with native-born Brits.

Over time, however, erosion sets in as the vast bureaucracy managing the building fails to deliver necessary services. Complaints multiply about doors that don't fit their frames, windows that fall out, and boilers inconveniently moved from kitchens to hallways. The real focus is on dressing up the tower's exterior because the council estate, located in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, abuts the homes of David Beckham, David Cameron, and other notables.

In Grenfell, Cameron appears in a video announcing a new government initiative to revive the flagging economy by cutting business-related red tape. It's a policy that will have deadly consequences: The decision is taken to clad the tower in aluminum composite, a relatively inexpensive, but highly combustible, material. One of the more galling facts to emerge from the subsequent inquiry is that Arconic, the American company that manufactured the cladding panels, knew full well how flammable they were, so much so that that it was illegal to sell them in the US. Undaunted, Arconic simply shifted its sales efforts toward countries, such as the UK, where standards were more relaxed.

The second act, a minute-by-minute account of the fire, is almost unbearably suspenseful. When an apartment on the fourth floor ignites, the fire brigade and emergency call center team implement the "stay put" policy, believing that residents on the higher floors are safe. What nobody realizes is how quickly the tower's façade will become a wall of flames, spreading deadly black smoke to the top.

Seeing people whom one has come to know and like in mortal danger makes Grenfell a terrifying experience, as each of them weighs, agonizingly, whether to stay in place or make a desperate run for safety. Nick Burton is stuck on a high floor with his wife, who suffers from Alzheimer's. Maher Khoudair, who uses crutches because of a childhood bout of polio, urges his wife and daughters to escape; later, realizing that rescue isn't coming, he must navigate the tower's stairs in impenetrable, smoke-filled darkness. Antonio Roncolato, one of the very last to get out nearly six hours later, keeps tabs on the situation in anguished phone calls from his son, before being physically carried out by a couple of firemen. Hanan Wahabi keeps constant phone contact with her brother and family who live upstairs, not realizing that she will never see them again.

The directors, Phyllida Lloyd and Anthony Simpson-Pike, have assembled a nimble company; each actor takes on the role of a survivor -- the exception being Jackie Clune, who appears as a member of the Labour Party Council -- while stepping in as various politicians, witnesses, and other ancillary figures. Each performs with extraordinary authority and conviction, immersing us in the life of a community in a terrible moment of crisis.

The production design is both effectively simple and technically up to date. Georgia Lowe's in-the-round set design relies on little more than a pile of cardboard boxes. (Her costumes go a long way toward distinctively delineating each Grenfell resident.) Azusa Ono's lighting is crucial in directing our attention toward the right company member; she contributes significantly to the terror of the escape scenes, staged in near darkness, alleviated by little more than a few narrow bars of light on the floor. Akhila Krishnan's video design combines live feeds during the government inquiry scenes with key pieces of documentary evidence, BBC news broadcasts, and a pro-business speech by Cameron that, in retrospect, couldn't look more unfortunate. Donato Wharton's sound design evokes children at play, static, and fire alarms in addition to the strategic use of reinforcement and reverb; his most powerful contribution is the series of frightened phone calls to 999, the UK equivalent of 911. The tense, muted underscoring is by Benjamin Kwasi Burrell with an assist from Brain Rays.

My only reservation about Grenfell is that at the point where it would end with the greatest impact, with a video roll call of the 71 who died, it continues with a filmed sequence featuring some of the Grenfell survivors, detailing efforts to keep alive memories of the fire. This is followed by a staging coup that sends the audience out of the theatre. These would surely be effective in another context; coming at the end of a wrenching three hours, they seem just a tad redundant. Not everyone will agree with his assessment and, arguably, they have a point: As of this writing, the release of the inquiry's fully detailed report has been repeatedly postponed, indefinitely staving off the prospect of criminal charges. Until then, the community remains mobilized. In any case, this is riveting theatre. --David Barbour