1st Night Photos: Called to Account Double Takes

People were seeing double at the Tricycle Theatre last night, and it had nothing to do with the potency of the drinks served up in the venue’s bar. Amongst the first night guests for Called to Account were the lawyers and several key witnesses involved in compiling source material for the latest in the theatre’s award-winning series of Tribunal Plays (See News, 10 Jan 2007).

Earlier this year, two leading barristers: Philippe Sands QC (for the prosecution - played on stage by actor Thomas Wheatley) and Julian Knowles (for the defence – played by David Michaels) tested the evidence of the grounds for an indictment of prime minister Tony Blair for the crime of aggression against Iraq. They examined witnesses including: ex Cabinet minister Clare Short, American political adviser and lobbyist Richard Perle, Iraqi research fellow Dr Shirwan Al-Mufti, former communications director of the UN Ed Mortimer and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Don Van Natta.

Their reports form the basis for the new play, subtitled “The indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the crime of aggression against Iraq - a Hearing”, which follows the Tricycle’s earlier verbatim dramas investigating the ongoing “war on terror” – 2004’s Guantanomo – Honor Bound to Defend Freedom, which transferred to the West End and Broadway, and 2003’s Justifying War, a dramatisation of the Hutton Inquiry into the death of government arms advisor Dr David Kelly. The new piece is edited by Richard Norton-Taylor and, as usual for the Tribunal Plays, directed by Tricycle artistic director Nicolas Kent.

TO SCROLL THROUGH ALL OF THE CALLED TO ACCOUNT 1st NIGHT PHOTOS,
JUST CLICK ON THE "NEXT >" LINKS BELOW THE FOLLOWING FRAME.

Immediately after last night’s press performance, director Nicolas Kent joined Times journalist David Aaronovitch and Liberal Democrat leader Sir Walter Menzies (Ming) Campbell in a Q&A chaired by Channel 4 newscaster Jon Snow to further examine some of the issues raised by Called to Account, after which guests decamped to the café bar for celebration and, no doubt, more debate.

For 1st Night Photos, our Whatsonstage.com photographer Dan Wooller was on hand at the Tricycle for the party along with the cast, their doppelgangers and other guests including former Today programme correspondent Andrew Gilligan, who broke the 2003 story about Downing Street “sexing up” its Iraq weapons dossier, which was followed by David Kelly’s suicide and the Hutton Inquiry. Called to Account continues at the Tricycle until 19 May 2007.

- by Terri Paddock

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