Susan Moore reviews Richard Norton-Taylor's play about the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. IT IS NOT often that even the most devoted political activists continue a formal political discussion until 11.30pm on a Friday night. It is even more unusual that such an event should take place at a theatre performance - even a theatre that has seen as many progressive events as the Tricycle in Brent, North West London.
After most performances of The Colour of Justice, there is a panel discussion in which the issues in raised in the play are examined further. When I visited, this allowed the audience to discuss what they had seen unfolding on the stage, but also to exchange information about anli-lacısı campaigning.
When I arrived at the theatre I didn't quite know what to expect. I had followed the Lawrence enquiry quite closely and knew that the play was entirely based on the transcripts from the 69 days of public hearings. I did wonder if my attention would be held by a performance of more than 2 hours. During the first ten minutes my doubts grew. The first few. presentations seemed somewhat flat and slow, and I didn't hear anything I didn't know. There were things I warmed to. Neville and Doreen Lawrence were the only characters on stage who didn't have easy access to the huge computers on which all the relevant documents were called up - they had to lean awkwardly to see what was being Stephen Lawrence considered. Jeremy Clyde, playing Michael Mansfield, has rather a different build to the lawyer, but when I shut my eyes I could believe it were him, so well has Clyde got off his intonation patterns.
Richard Norton-Taylor had set himself a more difficult task than when he wrote Half the Picture, an adaptation of the Scott arms-to-Irag Inquiry.
While that inquiry certainly dealt with serious issues, their direct consequences were further away from much of his audience. It was possible to deal with many of the characters with somewhat of a lighter touch than in building up a picture of the events surronding Stephen Lawrence's murder. On the stage before me, police offficer after police officer came forward to give evidence and the themes became sharper. When Norton-Taylor condensed the 11,000 pages of transcript into about 100, he explains that he "set out to include the most telling exchanges, many of which did not hit the headlines at the time which reflect the interlocking threads which ran throughout the Inquiry - police incompetence, conscious or unconscious racism and stereotyping and the hint of corruption in the background." Certainly as the evening wore on, I became convinced that he had succeeded brilliantly. It certain seems impossibile to believe that every crucial piece of paper that should have recorded police activity in the vital first days after Stephen's murder vanished with no human agency.
I had known the facts from the press reports, but they had been strung out. Seeing them concentrated together increased their impact.
I remembered reading about Doreen Lawrence's anger when she gave Detective Chief Superintendent William Illsley, who supervised the inurder investigation a piece of paper with the names of the suspects on it and saw him screw it up as if to throw it away.
But the dramatic reconstruction highlights the subtleties in a more powerful way than a newspaper report can.
We see the reason for Doreen's response; the essential contempt of this man for her search for justice. This is underlined by the way he treats the crucial evidence she gives him - denying its significance by folding it time and again into the smallest piece of paper possible. To add insult to injury he then contradicts her evidence by his pedantic differentiation of 'folding' and 'crumpling'. But for once we can see what is actually going on, and he is left standing there holding the crucial note in a way that completely validates Doreen's, interpretation. There were other things that I had not picked up on - or remembered. The extent to which the family were kept in the dark, the scale of the failure to collect evidence that could have nailed the suspects, and the complete defensiveness when police racism was raised were just a few of the issues Norton- that were explored in new ways. Taylor has And the concondensed the trast between the statements 11,000 pages of from Duwayne transcript into Brooks and the Lawrences and about 100 the police officers was an enderstated counterpoint that spoke. volumes. If the play had weaknesses they were in its silences. Duwayne Brooks doesn't get much focus. During the private prosecution he was 'looked after' by Officer XX, the man who was in cahoots with wanted drug dealer Clive Norris, father of one of the suspects. This obscene fact comes out in the play, but in second hand testimony so that some of its impact is lost.
While we see on stage many of the most prominent characters in the story there is one absence that makes a difference.
Not Sir Paul Condon, the other suspects (only Jamie Acourt THE STEPHEN LAWRENCE INGURY :Eheu by Richid No