On April 16 2007 a young student at Virginia Polytechnic carried out two separate shootings approximately two hours apart. He killed thirty-two people and wounded many others before killing himself. Just over a year later trying to dramatise these events could have proved disastrous, even tasteless and gratuitous. Have no such fears. This show is magnificent.
It’s difficult to know where to start. There is a kind of linear narrative, but there is so much more to it than that. The lighting and soundscape are incredible (Stuart Pardoe, Kevin Woods, Donato Wharton) and the all round design is by turns beautiful and chilling. The use of projection and multi-media is as good as any I’ve seen, indeed those rather dry and technical terms don’t really do any of it justice – it’s a work of art.
The script is comprised of words from people who were actually there on the day and knew the killer, Seung-Hui Cho. Through them we learn that he was known to be mentally unbalanced. The issues thrown up by this harrowing story are many, but why such an obviously unbalance young man was allowed to own handguns and effectively slipped through the mental health care system is one of them. The law was changed after the shooting.
The acting is strong from everyone, and pitched at the right level. There is little hysteria, no crying and melodrama. It’s all so real. At one point we are taken through a montage of classroom scenes to emphasise that this was just another day like any other. The tension that’s cranked up is almost unbearable, and when we get to the actual shootings, handled with physical brilliance by the performers, the awful inevitability of it all strikes home hard. Almost unwatchable though, is the scene when we hear the real recording of a young girl hiding under a desk having called 911. We hear the real shots ring out in the corridor as Cho gets closer and closer. Then the barely whispered words…. “
“He’s in the room”.
I fear this review is barely scratching the surface of the density and complexity of some of the questions posed here. One such question is should this play have been put together at all. Is it right to make “entertainment” out of stuff like this, especially when the event is so recent. This cuts to the heart of an even bigger question – what is theatre for, what are its responsibilities? One of the drama teachers from the Tech wrote to one of the actors in the company “as theatre artists we strive to strengthen the muscles of compassion…. We study the ways to make beauty out of pain. We learn how to create elegant and meaningful rituals that celebrate our shared and fragile humanity. We listen. We give voice.”
Perhaps on another day I might have found that rather pompous and self-important, but in the context of this piece it is spot on and as elegant a manifesto for the power of the theatre as I have ever heard. Under the extraordinary direction of Catherine Alexander this company has indeed, out of terrible pain created magnificent beauty. I think what moved me the most was the realisation that for every destructive force in the world there are good people, genuinely good, caring people who take the trouble to create work like this.
[Robin T. Barton]
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