Drama about events within living memory has been en vogue of late. Michael Sheen / Blair / Frost / Clough is the undisputed King of the genre although Her Majesty Helen Mirren might give him a run for his money. Recent big-budget films are a considerable improvement on the toe-curling television docudramas of the past with their Crimewatch acting style and stilted scripts, but none of them holds a candle to Philip Ralph’s Deep Cut for Sherman Cymru at the Tricycle Theatre until 4 April.
A simple living room set and the confessional, conversational tone of the writing combine to achieve something that is beyond both big and small screens: a creeping, uneasy awareness in the spectator’s mind that the events unfolding on stage are not a closed story with a happy ending for which Oscar nominations aplenty will be forthcoming. This play is about the unresolved anguish of a living, breathing, grieving family.
Ciaran McIntyre’s charismatic, measured performance as Des James, the father of Cheryl James who died of gunshot wounds at Deepcut barracks, is pitched so perfectly that it is impossible not to participate in the family’s desire for a public enquiry to determine exactly what happened to Cheryl and the three other young recruits who lost their lives between 1995 and 2002.
Writer Philip Ralph expresses the wish, in the programme notes, that his play’s argument should not be ‘seen to be skewed or polemical’. I am not sure that he, or anybody, could succeed in presenting such emotive issues from a position of true neutrality: to engage with the James’ quest for answers is to take their side, however unconsciously. Ralph goes on to say that he believes one of theatre’s key functions is to ask questions:” the questions about what went happened at Deepcut barracks seem more urgent when actors are in a room with you than when the real people they portray are the final item on Newsnight just before the weather forecast.
Deep Cut is at The Tricycle Theatre until 4 April 2009.
