Sus

Sus takes place in a police station in
East London. Two detectives, Karn (Simon Armstrong) and the less senior Wilby
(Laurence Spellman,) are waiting for the election results to come in, when
Delroy (Clint Dyer) is brought
in. He has been picked up on ‘sus’, the law that, until it was repealed in 1980, allowed the police to stop and
search individuals under suspicion alone. This is not the first time it has
happened to him; as a black man on the lower rungs of society, Delroy is a
particular target of the police during this period and he is beginning to lose
his patience.

What follows, as Delroy, still ignorant of his supposed
crime, is interrogated without the least recourse to human decency or justice,
is a brilliantly grim examination of a social philosophy that values order over
all else.

Chloe Lamford’s design is necessarily spare. The audience
sit on four sides of the Young Vic’s petite second space, the interview room
and its inhabitants entirely exposed to our gaze. There is nothing to distract
from the precision and power of the performances and, such is the intimacy of
this production, at moments one is tempted to speak out in response to the
cruelty being played out before us.

Dyer is heart-wrenching to watch. While both Armstrong and
Spellman offer strikingly effective portrayals of the pitiless detectives, Dyer
is a quivering bundle of confusion, rage, pain – both mental and physical – and
shock at the treatment Delroy is receiving at the hands of the police. It is an astonishing performance.