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Author
Robin Soans
Director
Max Stafford-Clark
Design
Jonathan
Fensom
Performers
Chipo Chung
Christopher Ettridge
Alexander Hanson
Lloyd Huthinson
Ruth Negga
Catherine Russell
Christopher Ryman
June Watson
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Royal Court Theatre
30 June - 06 August 2005 |
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Talking
to Terrorists
is a new drama by the verbatim
theatre specialist, Robin
Soans. It is superbly staged
by Max Stafford Clark and
extensively and carefully
researched from a wide variety
of interviews. The play is
entirely composed of the words
of people involved with terror.
The accounts and opinions
of real killers, elicited
in conversations by Soans
and members of the cast are
voiced by actors; but the
effect is curiously un-shocking.
A Ugandan terrorist tells
us "We killed with total
commitment. We fought; we
tortured." Former Irish
operatives takes us through
their greatest bombs; we are
told of people who hack limbs
off children; of stealing
underwear from the dead. But
for an audience used to television
documentaries this form makes
the appalling information
irresponsibly palatable. You
are not looking into the eyes
of people who have murdered
and maimed, you are looking
into the eyes of actors -
it softens the moral impact
and makes the interest almost
prurient.
The play takes its title from
Mo Mowlam's dictum: "Talking
to terrorists is the only
way to beat them". It
opens with her, and though
her words are used verbatim
she and her partner Jon are
played for laughs, she raises
a titter every time she uses
the word 'fuck' and Jon, whose
stiffened gait and vacant,
amiable smile is supposedly
faithfully re-enacted, comes
across as a complete idiot
- something which I suspect
he is not. The former Secretary
of State for Northern Ireland
herself, seems colossally
egocentric - something she
may be. She says, "Tony
seems to have learnt nothing
from history. If you want
to change their minds, you
have to talk to them. They
won't do it very willingly
because they don't trust you,
but yes, you have to talk
to terrorists." This
is the guiding principle of
the Royal Court's production
and the reason why, as the
tube train rumbles into Sloane
Square Station beneath your
feet, it seems so misguided.
There are no terrorists to
talk to, and London in its
grief and shock is not at
the talking stage. Although
reviewers at the start of
its run called this play 'the
most important and illuminating
work of the year', the bombs
in London have exposed it
as simply superficial. It
doesn't have anything to add
to the urgent questions of
the moment, its seems like
a relic of a time when people
could be more easily reassured
that there really is a talking
cure for terrorism.
There are genuinely moving
moments in the play, however,
and some fine performances.
The story of the Ambassador
to Uzbekistan and his wrestling
with his health; his conscience;
the foreign office and his
love life, has humour and
pathos. You get an inkling
of what it might be like to
be locked up in a hole underground
when the Terry Waite character
tells us, "I could say
in the face of my captors'
'You've tried to break my
bodyÖyou haven't; you've tried
to break my mindÖyou haven'tÖbut
my soul is not yours to possess.'
But that in essence is exactly
what is being said by themÖ'You
can invade my country, do
what you will, but my soul
is not yours to possess'.
But at the same time as bringing
home Waite's privation, this
comment underlines the inherent
weakness of factual drama.
If the facts change the drama
is fundamentally undermined.
Depositions by real terrorists
from different conflicts are
intercut throughout the play
in an attempt to elucidate
universal themes that underlie
the brutalities of political
terror. But the terrorists
who bombed the city last week
did not come from a country
that was invaded and had not
suffered the torture and humiliation
of which the terrorists in
this play talk.
Perhaps Robin Soans could
have recut the play, certainly
a television documentary would
have been recut after the
bombs. Perhaps new interviews
could have made
Talking
to Terrorists
more relevant. Perhaps the
events of this summer simply
show the dangers of 'real-life
drama': Real life moves on,
this drama got left behind.
Charlie
Taylor |
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