Stockwell
Tricyle Theatre
Briefly
pushing aside the concerns of medieval bishops, we decided to rush up to
The Tricycle for Stockwell, the latest in their excellent
sequence of ‘drama-documentaries’. It is, I think, hard to explain to people
that these plays are both dramatic and interesting. Different techniques are
used to bring the dry verbiage to life, and this fairly tight 90 minutes certainly gives you
the salient facts.
As usual, every word in Stockwell comes from an official transcript, this time the inquest of Jean Charles De Menezes. The fabulously talented cast play a range of characters, effortlessly and convincingly changing roles from moment to moment. In fact the eight actors portray over forty characters and yet it is all seamless and crystal clear who is whom. The dialogue takes us through the day, from the initial surveillance at the flat, onto the bus and then the final terrifying denouement on the platform at Stockwell.
The lynchpin is Jack Klaff as Michael Mansfield, the barrister representing the De Menezes family. The main confrontation was his questioning of Cressida Dick, the senior ranking police officer. His attempts to get Ms Dick to admit any failure on the part of the police, even though an innocent man was shot down in cold blood fails. She will admit no fault, no failing, no culpability. This is despite our hearing a chain of errors and misjudgements – the surveillance team have only got the blown up photocopied images from failed London bomber Hussain Osmain’s gym membership card, and they don’t even have copies. No one has checked the address and noticed that the front door is communal and they have no idea which flat people have come from. The backup officers, who were supposed to talk to residents as they emerge to gather ‘intelligence’ have not turned up. The armed police similarly have not turned up, and famously the main surveillance officer, working alone, is having a pee when Jean Charles emerges. From then on everyone plays catch-up.
Most
shockingly for me was the fact that surveillance and control room do not
appear to have a common language, surely basic. Surveillance are absolutely
clear that at no stage did they give a positive identification, only that
‘they couldn’t rule him out’. This is mysteriously translated into the
firing squad believing that Jean Charles was definitely a suicide bomber.
Similarly there is confusion as to whether the armed police were ordered to
intervene or intercept.
I have much sympathy for the officers that killed De Menezes. They were let down, misled and put into an impossible position. Nonetheless, they show an equal inability to tell the truth. They claim there was no panic, no rash judgement, that De Menezes 'behaved suspiciously' and that minimum force was used. They also claim they identified themselves as armed police. How this set of affairs led to nine shots being fired on a man who being held down, and that not a single passenger heard them identify themselves as police tells a different story. The woman sitting next to Jean Charles said her first thought was to call the police as soon as possible, it never occurred her that these men were the police.
They were extraordinary times, tension was high, everyone was tired and exhausted. But Ms Dick and the Metropolitan Police need to accept that things went badly wrong not because of bad luck but because the system was not tight enough, the checks were not in place and the communication was appalling. In the final analysis recognising these errors is more important than forever giving condolences to the family.
I know I should have read up the case more carefully at the time, but.... I really appreciate this opportunity to really understand the story and the issues involved. The script imaginatively interweaves the facts, all the cast are excellent – most obviously Jack Klaff and Helen Worsley who plays every singe female in the story.
Stockwell has finished its run at the Tricycle, but hopefully will move on to other venues.