Justifying War

It’s not every day you see a play whose cast of characters includes Alastair Campbell, Geoff Hoon MP, Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme journalist Andrew Gilligan and BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies. But then Justifying War isn’t any play.

Those names, of course, were amongst the 75 witnesses who were called before Lord Hutton this summer in his inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of government scientist Dr David Kelly, after he was exposed as the source of the BBC’s news report that the dossier on “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction” (suggesting that Saddam could launch an WMD attack within 45 minutes) was flawed.

The inquiry was not broadcast, but full transcripts of what was said, as well as documentary evidence that was shown, are available on an official website (www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk). But a quicker and easier way to digest some of the proceedings is now available in the latest of the Tricycle’s brilliant Tribunal plays, as they’re called, in which Guardian journalist Richard Norton-Taylor has edited the transcripts and Tricycle artistic director Nicolas Kent has staged them to make a theatrical evening that is as compelling as it is challenging.

Justifying War follows the pair’s previous collaborations of putting on stage, amongst others, the Scott Arms to Iraq Inquiry and the Stephen Lawrence one, The Colour of Justice, which was subsequently seen at the National Theatre and in the West End. Justifying War has an even more dramatic immediacy, as Lord Hutton hasn’t even published his resulting report yet, and his inquiry only officially ended as recently as 13 October.

The new piece also combines the deeply political and the intensely personal in profound and moving ways because, apart from revealing the machinations of government and its relationship with the BBC, at the heart of it is the story of a respected scientist whose life quickly unravelled in the maelstrom.

Opening, as the inquiry did, with the audience standing for a minute’s silence in Kelly’s memory, and closing with the heartbreaking testimony of his widow (who is heard but not seen), Justifying War makes for a gripping drama, all the more painful and shocking for being drawn entirely from actual spoken words.

All is vividly brought to life by a superb ensemble of actors who bury themselves so selflessly within the real-life characters they’re playing that their efforts transcend mere impersonation or performance to indeed feel utterly true-to-life. Kent’s production, with the stage and auditorium surrounded by plasma screens onto which the evidence is projected, adds to the pervasive realism with the lavish casting of five silent court officials.

– Mark Shenton