Talking to Terrorists ( Archived )

Reviews

TALKING TO TERRORISTS REVIEWS

_Reviews from the London production _ 5 stars 5 STARS

Great themes and great theatre are on offer at the Royal Court. Max Stafford-Clark’s Out of Joint company and writer Robin Soans have taken dictation from politicians, hostages and terrorists to compile this documentary asking what terrorism is, what motivates it and what to do about it.

It’s a piece as extraordinary for its artful construction as for its testimony. A psychologist explains the appeal of terrorism to the young, while a girl soldier from Sierra Leone recounts her recruitment by a guerrila army. A bombmaker and a victim relate their experiences in a poignant tandem.

Characters parade past some famous, most not all given full, individual life by a superb, shape-shifting cast of eight. From the activists, there are the expected moments of horror and redemption. But a series of commentators, British establishment types, provide humour with their insight. An ambassador manages his feisty Uzbek bride as he condemns the use of torture in the war on terror. A Mo Mowlam ringer radiates pride to the point of smugness.

It’s cosy almost inappropriately so and as these characters wink and conspire with the Sloane Square audience, the show becomes not only about terrorism but about our inadequate reaction to it. However much we study and acknowledge responsibility, how can we, the unoppressed , ever fully understand this phenomenon? An evening to make you question the world and yourself.

Kieron Quirke, METRO, 6 July 2005. 4 stars 4 STARS

Robin Soans’Talking to Terrorists, co-produced by Out of Joint and the Royal Court, is the most important new play we have seen this year. Not only does it shed light on dark places; what becomes even clearer, on a second viewing, is the dramatic skill with which it moves from causes to effects.

People often accuse this kind of verbatim theatre of being mere journalism, but Soans and his director Max Stafford-Clark, juxtapose testimony in a way that would be hard to match in any medium but theatre.

A psychologist, for instance, talks about the appeal of terrorism to adolescents who have “a strong illusion of immortality.” This is immediately confirmed by evidence from ex-members of the IRA, UVF and Kurdish PKK, telling how they were inducted into their organisations as teenagers. “I felt myself truly at home,” says one, “for the first time in my life.”

This technique of constructive montage works even better in the second half, with a remarkable sequence on the 1984 Brighton hotel bombing. The chilling detachment of the IRA bomber (“You have to put events into a historical perspective”) is vividly contrasted with the stiff-upper-lippery of a Tory lady and the unassuaged anger of Lord Tebbit, whose wife was rendered a permanent invalid. What this sequence shows, in a way that is uniquely theatrical, is the chasm that often separates the terrorist from his intended victim.

“Talking to terrorists,” says Mo Mowlam early on, “is the only way to beat them.” In principle, yes; in practice it’s often difficult. But what this play brings out is the way people are propelled into terrorism not only by genetic or psychological factors but by the sheer intractibility of their situation. This is why the play is so important it implicitly questions whether the “war on terror” is ever winnable by military means.

Against a set of graffiti-marked concrete blocks, it is performed with astonishing versatility. Alexander Hanson switches with consummate ease from a British colonel to a Kurdish revolutionary, and Jonathan Cullen from a Belfast paramilitary to an ex-ambassador blowing the whistle on the use of torture in Uzbekistan. Lloyd Hutchinson, June Watson and Christopher Ettridge are exemplary in their re-creation of the Brighton bombing. At moments like this, verbatim theatre achieves the emotional power of high art.

Michael Billington, THE GUARDIAN, 6 July 2005

_Reviews from the national tour _

‘sensitively and intelligently provocative.’ Daily Mail

‘involving throughout with a first rate cast.’ The Observer

‘Robin Soans’s powerful and probing piece of theatre expertly selects, cuts and interweaves the verbatim accounts from former terrorists, their victims and the politicians who attempt to negotiate with them.’ Mail on Sunday

‘Max Stafford-Clark draws fantastic performances from his outstanding company. The result gives a platform to voices either never heard before or heard only as gunfire or tears. It opens your eyes and alters your attitude.’ Mail on Sunday

‘an arresting piece of work.’ Independent

‘Max Stafford-Clark’s Out of Joint company, previously acclaimed for The Permanent Way, has produced another superb investigative docudrama (in conjunction with the Royal court). Talking to Terrorists has been deftly woven together by Robin Soans using interviews with militant resistance fighters and people they_’v_e targeted, with ministers, diplomats, an army expert, a psychologist and everyday folk from London, Belfast, Uganda, Turkey and the Middle East.’ Independent

‘I will be astonished if the year turns up a more important, illuminating or moving play then this.’ Daily Telegraph

‘Soans seamlessly interweaves the testimonies, creating a flow of evidence and graphic details that has you hanging on to every word… Yes, surprisingly, the play isn’t entirely depressing. We hear of great courage here, as well as great suffering, of triumphs of the human spirit as well as its collapse into barbarism…The eight actors are flawless, playing up to five parts apiece with great versatility, and resolutely refusing to milk the traumatic material for easy pathos. It is all the more moving as a result, but this is in every respect, a truly remarkable piece of theatre.’ Daily Telegraph

‘It sheds light on a dark subject. It forces us to think about what actually constitutes “terrorism”. It shows that people acquire a strange eloquence when talking about subjects close to their hearts. It also proves that edited memories can achieve the potency of art.‘The Guardian

TALKING TO TERRORISTS

I will be astonished if the year turns up a more important, illuminating or moving play than this.

Max Stafford-Clark’s Out of Joint company has a superb record with verbatim theatre, ranging from Robin Soans’s A State Affair, about life on a Bradford council estate, to Davids Hare’s devastating The Permanent Way, about the dire state of Britain’s railways.

Now the company is tackling perhaps the most pressingly urgent and scary subject of our times, terrorism, against which the West is currently fighting such an amorphous, ill-defined war.

Once again compiled by Soans, Talking to Terrorists consists entirely of the words of those with direct experience of terror, elicited in interviews conducted by Soans, Stafford-Clark and a team of actor-researchers, several of whom appear in the show.

The range is amazing. We hear from a child soldier in Uganda, former members of the IRA and the UVF in Northern Ireland, from Kurds, Palestinians, and those who have seen action in Iraq. There is also an exceptionally lucid psychologist who explains just how attractive terrorism can seem to a confused teenager.

Some of the speakers are readily identifiable, among them Mo Mowlam, who proudly claims to have split Sinn Fein from the IRA and cheerfully describes Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness as normal family men, and Norman Tebbit, whose wife was so terribly injured in the Brighton bombing. Terry Waite also gives a graphic account of what it was like to be a hostage in the Lebanon for five years and face up to imminent execution.

It has often been said that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, and there are moments here that make the cliche seem vividly true. The accounts of state-sponsored torture and brutality that spurred several of those we hear from into action are chilling indeed.

Soans seamlessly interweaves the testimonies, creating a flow of evidence and graphic detail that has you hanging on to every word. The accounts of human cruelty are often almost unbearable to listen to, and I shan’t easily forget the description of the man who was boiled alive to obtain dubious evidence about Osama bin Laden, or the child soldier in Uganda who was supervising torture at the age of 13.

Yet, surprisingly, the play isn’t entirely depressing. We hear of great courage here, as well as great suffering, of triumphs of the human spirit as well as its collapse into barbarism. There are even moments of humour. Tebbitt who as one might imagine, takes a robust view of terrorists and yearns to take out a couple of IRA men with his shotgun

mordantly announces that he appeared barefoot at his interview to prove he hadn’t got cloven hooves. And a former British ambassador in Uzbekistan, appalled by evidence of British complicity in torture, proves to be hilariously entangled with a local belly dancer.

Stafford-Clark directs a lucid and enthralling production that never nudges the audience into a response but allows us to draw our own conclusions. And there are, of course, no easy conclusions to reach, beyond the truth grasped so long ago by the ancient Greek tragedians that blood will have blood and more blood. As the reformed UVF hard-man observes: People who kill someone also kill part of themselves. They lose part of their humanity.

The eight actors are flawless, playing up to five parts apiece with great versatility, and resolutely refusing to milk the traumatic material for easy pathos. It is all the more moving as a result, but this is, in every respect, a truly remarkable piece of theatre.

Charles Spencer, DAILY TELEGRAPH, 29 April 2005.

This is the latest superb piece of verbatim theatre by two masters of the form: the director Max Stafford-Clark and the writer Robin Soans. Entirely composed of interwoven testimonies from ex-terrorists, their victims, politicians and professionals, the play transcends journalism. The splendid multi-ethnic cast, assuming many different identities and getting inside the skin of discrepant persons, offer a symbol of large-minded communal activity that is the antithesis of the narrow concentration of the terrorist cell.

Paul Taylor, THE INFORMATION, 7-13 May 2005.

The fanatic inside us all

5 stars out of 5

There are several unsettling moments in Talking to Terrorists. In one, a psychologist comments that the difference between a terrorist and the rest of us really isn’t that great. What he means is that of 100 people vaguely worked up about an issue, even one as trivial as four-wheel drives in Chelsea, you will find one person who suddenly finds a real sense of purpose in becoming a tyre-slasher.

In another, a pukka colonel admits to an epiphany when he was 28 and serving in Northern Ireland: I realised that if I had been born in Crossmaglen or South Armagh, I would have been a terrorist. And that’s an understanding every soldier should have.

Robin Soans’ powerful and probing piece of theatre expertly selects, cuts and interweaves the verbatim accounts from former terrorists, their victims and the politicians who attempt to negotiate with them.

Though unnamed, youll recognised the down-to-earth Mo Mowlam, the former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who misses the chauffeur-driven car that came with the job (John and I could go out in the evening and get p***ed), and Norman Tebbit, who, with equal candour, if rather less forgiveness, confesses he would cheerfully show a terrorist both barrels of his 12-bore but for the problems that that would cause his wife, paralysed in the bomb attack on Brighton’s Grand Hotel.

While the revelations of a child soldier cannot be anything but harrowing, and the vengeance of a Bethlehem schoolgirl whose friend was killed by an Israeli sniper is truly shocking, the piece is serious without being po-faced or relentlessly grim.

A devout Muslim, sickened by the lewd and undisciplined nature of contemporary Western culture says, its better that you’re gay and Muslim than just gay because, whatever happens, you will find Allah; an unbeliever will just rot. And, by the way, he hates Muslim fanatics for stirring up religious prejudice as much as the rest of us.

Terry Waite reveals how when he was held hostage for five years, he longed for books. His guard kindly brought him A Manual of Breastfeeding (it wasn’t even illustrated) which didn’t quite hit the spot.

Max Stafford-Clark draws fantastic performances from his outstanding company. The result gives a platform to voices either never heard before or heard only as gunfire or tears. It opens your eyes and alters your attitude.

Georgina Brown, MAIL ON SUNDAY, 17 May 2005.

Talking to Terrorists has been deftly woven together by Robin Soans using interviews with militant resistance fighters and people they’ve targeted, with ministers, diplomats, an army expert, a psychologist and everyday folk from London, Belfast, Uganda, Turkey and the Middle East.

The witnesses identifiably include Terry Waite, Mo Mowlam, Norman Tebbit, one of the IRA unit who planted the Brighton bomb, and the ex-ambassador Craig Murray who objected to the government using foreign intelligence apparently extracted through torture. Glimpses of these professionals domestic lives are deliberately kept in the script, subtly qualifying the stated moral stances.

A quietly superb team of eight actors including June Watson, Lloyd Hutchinson, Jonathan Cullen, and Chipo Chung play all the parts, just slipping into a different jacket or another accent. The individual stories are fascinating while the underlying point is to find the common denominators. This piece wisely draws its parallels with a light touch and keeps it psychological conclusions subjective, but the issues contemplated involve social deprivations, youngsters as prime impressionable material and the lasting mental scars of witnessing such violence. There are harrowing accounts of mass slaughter and torture, plus scorching condemnations, by insiders, of the workings of Blairs government and the situation in Iraq. (It’s a complete disaster. I’m not saying we will, but, oh yeah, we face strategic failure.) The piece is also, remarkably, entertaining and touching, not least when the ambassador is interrupted by his belly-dancing wife, and when Hutchinson’s Waite recalls the two fantastically inappropriate books his captors gave him: Great Escapes by Eric Williams and A Manual of Breastfeeding and it wasn’t even illustrated. You couldn’t make it up. Inevitably, not the whole picture, but an arresting piece of work and highly recommended.

Kate Bassett, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY, 1 May 2005.

Hope, even when the ends can’t justify the bloody deeds

4 stars out of 5

Had I known that Robin Soans’ Talking to Terrorists would end with a Palestinian schoolgirl saying how happy the fall of the twin towers had left her “It’s their turn to suffer; I could see thousands of them die, I wouldn’t feel a thing,” I think I would have felt pretty suspicious.

I needn’t have worried. Soans, his eight-person cast and Max Stafford-Clark, who directs, have not lost their senses of right, wrong, sympathy or horror. They’ve interviewed people involved in terrorism as perpetrators or victims or both, for instance, the battling Kurd who was hideously tortured, then imprisoned for aeons, and is now precariously rebuilding his life with a young wife and child in Tottenham and those people are bringing their witness to a stage furnished with nothing more than a table and chairs. They seen to want, above all, to understand.

Inevitably they fail in that endeavour. In the first half there are knowing monologues from a donnish psychologist (Christopher Ettridge) who talks both of ideological dreamers who lure those with amorphous grievances into cultish violence and of the exhilaration of young people who are made to feel that they can change the world and reshape history. But he disappears in Act II. As well he might, for who can adequately explain a heart of darkness that surfaces, ironically, in the sexually abused, brainwashed Ugandan girl guerrilla (Chipo Chung) overseeing torture and mass murder before she is 13?

Though no interviewee is named in the programme, some are recognisable: Mo Mowlam (June Watson), who not only has tough things to say about Blair’s egomaniac style of government but also gives the play its title by claiming that her jolly tea-time talks with Gerry and Martin got the Ulster peace process going. Lord Tebbitt (Ettridge in far less professional mode), who advocates ruthlessness in defence of democracy and clearly regrets that the figures lurking in his drive at night were policemen and therefore not fair game for his trusty shotgun; Terry Waite (Lloyd Hutchinson), saying the Lord’s Prayer before surviving a mock education; and our ex-Ambassador in Tashkent (Jonathan Cullen), who feels that the FO and M16 were happy to believe that the ignorant victims of a vicious regime were in cahoots with bin Laden.

Palestine, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Sierra Leone, a Luton where young Muslims talk of throwing gays off cliffs (but only when they’re dead) and an Iraq that, as a suave British colonel assures us, is being turned into a terrorists paradise by political ineptitude: all have their place on this blood-stained map. But not everything is awful. The IRA man who killed Ian Gow at Brighton meets a notorious UDF bomber in the library at Long Kesh and a friendship is born. They have, they discover, histories, needs, fears and regrets in common. That doesn’t justify their deeds, but it does tell us that the strongest barricades can sometimes be breached, the most venomous enemies reconciled.

Benedict Nightingale, TIMES, 28 April 2005.

4 stars out of 5

Verbatim theatre is not just living journalism. If it is to succeed it has to have the shape and rhythm of art. That was true of Bloody Sunday and The Colour of Justice. And at its best its also true of this extraordinary kaleidoscopic collage created by Robin Soans and co-produced by Out of Joint and the Royal Court.

The whole show is based on the testimony of those who have had experience of terrorism. And there is a moment in the second half when it juxtaposes the words of perpetrator and victim with a directness that would be hard to achieve in fiction. The ex-IRA man responsible for the Brighton hotel bombing of 20 years ago coldly says: Of course I regret the suffering I caused but circumstances made our actions inevitable. Meanwhile, a Tory female survivor recalls both the horror of the explosion and the stoicism with which it was greeted. As played by Lloyd Hutchinson and June Watson, these intersecting memories are overwhelming.

The danger of a show like this is that it romanticises terrorism. But Soans avoids that pitfall by showing how torture and oppression create their own violent antidote, using Uganda and Kurdistan as examples. He also never lets us forget that terrorist acts punish the innocent as well as the guilty. One of the most moving testimonies comes from an envoy, clearly Terry Waite, who found that attempted negotiation turned him into a captive. There is even a wild humour about his revelation that pleading for something to read while he was incarcerated, he was offered Great Escapes by Eric Williams.

Although Soans’ script strives hard to balance cause and effect, it would be faux-naf to pretend that it doesnt have a political agenda: namely terrorism can never be countered by retaliatory force alone. But, although the show has a none-too-hidden message, it forces us to think about what actually constitutes terrorism and shows that people have a strange eloquence when talking about a subject close to their hearts.

Staged very simply against Jonathan Fensom’s set of graffiti-strewn concrete block, Max Stafford-Clark’s production is aesthetically satisfying and very well acted: especially by Christopher Ettridge as a helpfully explanatory psychologist, Jonathan Cullen as a sceptical British ambassador and Alexander Hanson as a straight-talking colonel. Occasionally I could have done with a few more instant identification of the speakers. But this is an informative, enlightening show that proves edited memories can at best achieve the potency of art.

Michael Billington, GUARDIAN, 29 April 2005.