Grenfell: Value Engineering-Scenes from the Inquiry is a verbatim dramatisation of the Grenfell Inquiry.
It condenses key parts of the inquiry – focusing on the architects, contractors, materials suppliers and building control – into a two-and-a-half-hour stage show.
Actors – including David Robb (Downton Abbey’s Dr Clarkson) – play the part of inquiry participants but the words they speak are exactly what was said in the inquiry.
Journalist Richard Norton-Taylor had the task of editing down the words; the director is Nicolas Kent, former artistic director of the Tricycle Theatre, 1984 to 2012. The pair have previously staged plays based on inquiries into Bloody Sunday and the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
The show is running at The Tabernacle theatre in Notting Hill – selected as the nearest venue to Grenfell Tower itself – from 13th October until 13th November, and then briefly at Birmingham Rep from 16th-20th November 2021.
The production is a not-for-profit venture supported by a number of individual donors and charities. It is budgeted to break even, and in the unlikely event there are surplus funds at the end of the run they will contractually have to be accounted for and returned to the numerous charitable foundations who gave grants to the project, the producers say.
For further details, see: grenfellvalueengineering.com
You can hear an interview with Nicolas Kent, the director, in the latest edition (episode 80) of Re:Construction, the Construction Index podcast, which can be downloaded from all the usual podcast outlets or listened to at www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/podcast
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