Story of de Menze's Stockwell shooting hits London stage
The shooting by police of the innocent Jean Charles de Menezes inspires this gripping piece of theatre. Four years ago this week Jean Charles de Menezes, a young Brazilian electrician, was shot dead on an Underground train at Stockwell station in London. His killers were two specialist firearms officers, members of a team of policemen who had led themselves to believe — or had been led to believe — that the man was a suicide bomber. He was not, and the identification of him as such was part of a sequence of misjudgments made, one has to remember, a fortnight after terrorist bombs killed and injured more Londoners on a single day than since the height of the Blitz.
It was also the day after police had thwarted a similar attempt by other bombers who had entered the Tube system at Stockwell. One of these escaped arrest and had been linked to the block of flats where de Menezes lived. Coincidences happen, and a chain of coincidences may look like a certainty. But in this case it led to the death of an innocent man and, last autumn, to an inquest intended to discover how the appalling errors happened. From transcripts of the inquest the writer Kieron Barry, the director Sophie Lifschutz and eight actors playing 30 parts have created a 90-minute play that is more gripping than anything else to be seen in the London theatre.
A dozen identical chairs are the only furnishings of the set, and while Helen Worsley (later to play Commander Cressida Dick) outlines the events the other actors take their places behind her on the chairs. Kevin Quarmby plays the coroner, but also various counsel for the parties concerned; Jack Klaff plays some of the same characters but chiefly Michael Mansfield, QC, counsel for the de Menezes family.
This doubling is rarely a cause for confusion because our attention is held so tightly by the emerging facts...
Read entire article at Times (UK)
It was also the day after police had thwarted a similar attempt by other bombers who had entered the Tube system at Stockwell. One of these escaped arrest and had been linked to the block of flats where de Menezes lived. Coincidences happen, and a chain of coincidences may look like a certainty. But in this case it led to the death of an innocent man and, last autumn, to an inquest intended to discover how the appalling errors happened. From transcripts of the inquest the writer Kieron Barry, the director Sophie Lifschutz and eight actors playing 30 parts have created a 90-minute play that is more gripping than anything else to be seen in the London theatre.
A dozen identical chairs are the only furnishings of the set, and while Helen Worsley (later to play Commander Cressida Dick) outlines the events the other actors take their places behind her on the chairs. Kevin Quarmby plays the coroner, but also various counsel for the parties concerned; Jack Klaff plays some of the same characters but chiefly Michael Mansfield, QC, counsel for the de Menezes family.
This doubling is rarely a cause for confusion because our attention is held so tightly by the emerging facts...