Grenfell, In The Words Of Survivors
National Theatre | ★★★★✩

There is a campaigning heart to this play by the South African-born Jewish writer Gillian Slovo.

Like many of Slovo’s previous verbatim works constructed from interviews, the most recent of which at the National gave voice to the parents of children kidnapped and conscripted by Islamic State, her latest is driven by a visceral sense of injustice.

This time, however, there is also a pronounced accusatory finger being pointed at those whose decisions, this play claims, led to the deaths of 72 people, 18 of them children.

All were victims, it is suggested, of deregulation proudly implemented by David Cameron when he was prime minister. His speech announcing the policy of paring down rules in the name of boosting enterprise is relayed here in television screens overlooking the stage, which is surrounded on all side by the audience.

However, the crosshairs of blame also target the cladding and insulation companies which, in recreations of the Grenfell Inquiry, admit to knowingly selling material they knew was flammable; the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council, which slashed maintenance budgets to a level where residents’ safety and basic rights were taken away; and the Tenant Maintenance Organisation, which ruthlessly enforced the policy and happily diminished the residents’ quality of life in the process.

Joe Alessi in Grenfell in the words of survivors at National Theatre by Maya Jeffers 14

Joe Alessi (Photo: Maya Jeffers)

It is a lot to take in. And although all this is information is vital to understanding why the fire happened, this investigation, which is co-directed by Phyllida Lloyd and Anthony Simpson-Pike, is inevitably most effective when it is at its most harrowing as it transports the audience to the night of June 14, 2017.

Here there is no depiction of fire, no sound effects of front doors being pounded by the fists of residents warning their neighbours of the fast-approaching danger, just the memories of these things calmly recounted by 12 survivors and performed by an expert ensemble cast.

From Italian restaurant manager Antonio Roncolato (Joe Alessi) who as the flames near his flat leaves a message to his work saying he may not be able to come in the following morning, to Rabia Yahya (Houda Echouafni) who lived on the 18th floor and followed the Fire Brigade’s fatal-to-many advice to stay put, before, at the last minute, making a break for it while clinging to her children down stairwells with melting walls and filled with blinding smoke.

Michael Shaeffer in Grenfell in the words of survivors at National Theatre by Maya Jeffers 20

Michael Shaeffer in Grenfell, In the Words of Aurvivors (Photo: Maya Jeffers)

Less effective is this show’s invitation to make activists of us all by corralling the audience into a memorial-cum-protest march outside of the building.

The gesture felt laboured and manipulative. The more natural climax is when a section of the audience sits with cast on stage, individually leaving behind their individually lit seats, a mute recognition of the humanity lost.