Books, Movies and Random Thoughts

This was the first play in our Sydney Theatre Company subscription for this year. I didn’t know anything about it, aside from the fact that it was by David Hare and was about British Rail. If I thought about it at all, I probably expected something along the same lines of last year’s Harbour – a fictional story, with a bit of an agenda, about a group of fictional people in a real situation.

I certainly didn’t expect what we got – something a lot like a documentary, consisting entirely of interviews, but with actors playing the parts of the interviewees. From the program, it appears that the actors (this was the original cast, not an Australian production) had been involved in the interview process.

Initially, I wasn’t quite sure how to take this. The beginning was about the actual privatisation of British Rail, and I didn’t think the approach would be sustainable for an entire play.

However, it turned out that the main focus was on four different rail disasters, which were, arguably, a result of the privatisation. So the people talking included survivors and bereaved (people who had lost relatives in the crash), as well as some of the decision makers in the companies involved. It was absolutely riveting stuff. In particular, an interesting dichotomy came through in the different attitudes of the survivors and the bereaved – the survivors having a desire to ensure that a similar accident never happened again, but mainly just wanting to get on with their lives; and the bereaved wanting someone to blame for the loss of their loved ones.

Not a happy play, but a very powerful one.