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The Colour of JusticeDateline: 28th February, 1999 On Sunday 21st February BBC2 broadcast a TV version of the Tricycle Theatre's production of "The Colour of Justice", a play based on the transcripts of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. It is devised and directed by Nicholas Kent. (Stephen Lawrence was a black teenager who was killed in an unprovoked racial attack on 22nd April, 1993. No one has been convicted, although five white youths have been named as being responsible by the "Daily Mail". The police's handling of the case has been the subject of much criticism, with accusations being made of racism. An internal police inquiry, conducted by Kent Constabulary, cleared them of mishandling the case, but criticisms continued and a public inquiry was set up under the chairmanship of Sir William Macpherson. The inquiry concluded that there was "institutionalised racism" in the Metropolitan Police which caused them not to follow up the case with sufficient vigour. The Inquiry's findings were leaked before its publication and Home Secretary Jack Straw attempted to get an injunction to prevent publication, but that was turned down. When the results were officially published last week, it included a list of names and addresses of police informants. It was quickly withdrawn for the list to be removed, but not before copies had been sent to the five who had been accused. These informants are now in fear of their lives and there is talk of suing the Home Office.) The so-called dramadoc (dramatised documentary) is familiar to us on TV but its stage version is less so, although far from unknown. The Tricycle (Kilburn, London) has already given us three such productions: Half the Picture (on the Scott Inquiry into the Arms to Iraq scandal), Nuremberg, and Srebrenica (about the 1996 war crimes tribunal at The Hague). The Colour of Justice follows in this tradition. The production takes extracts from the transcript of the inquiry and re-enacts them. The only words spoken come directly from the transcripts. The play and the TV version, end, as did the actual inquiry, with a minute's silence in memory of Stephen Lawrence. The two hour TV production was a powerful piece of work and gripped the viewer right from the start. Its impact was greatly increased by the 10 minute programme In Stephen's Name, a look at the "key events in the campaign for justice", which preceeded it. We are told that the TV programme was faithful to the stage play. Documentary or agit-prop? There is no way a piece like this can be unbiased. The inquiry ran for weeks, so the very act of selecting what is to be portrayed on-stage is bound to be a distortion. Bias is inevitable, and what came over very clearly is that Nicholas Kent believes that (a) the five youths are guilty, (b) the investigating officers did have a racist bias which prevented them carrying out a proper investigation, and (c) they covered up by "losing" essential documents. None of this was explicitly stated, but the selection of the material to be performed and the portrayal of the officers concerned by the actors made it very clear to the audience where their sympathies should lie. Now I am not saying that this is a bad thing, or that Kent is wrong - the facts that emerged during the inquiry amply justify these conclusions - but we have to be aware that the bias is there and that we are not watching a proper reconstruction of the inquiry, but rather edited highlights chosen to support the writer/director's own vision of what happened on that dreadful day. I am reminded of other plays which take a similar approach. In Oh What A Lovely War! we are presented with an interpretation of World War I, not a history, and in John McGrath's The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black, Black Oil we have a similar interpretation of the history of Scotland. However there are major differences. Both War and The Cheviot are very theatrical, making use of comedy, music, dance and drama, whereas the Colour of Justice is entirely text-based. War and The Cheviot, by their changes of scene, character and, especially, style, remind us that we are watching a performance, but Colour attempts to make us feel we are watching real life. Real life? The words are "real". They are the words actually spoken by those who took part in the inquiry - the chairman, the counsel, the witnesses. But, as every actor knows, beneath each text is a sub-text, the unspoken words which represent the thoughts and feelings of the speaker. It is when we move into the realm of sub-text, the very basis of the acting, that we come to territory which is much more open to interpretation. An actor, whether consciously or unconsciously, uses the sub-text to decide upon motivation, to discover the feelings that lie beneath the words, and so it is at this point that we move away from what is "real" to what is interpretation. Add to that the input of the director and it is easy to see how the "real" words can be interpreted in a way which is totally different to the "original". Inevitably, therefore, some distortion is bound to occur. I don't use "distortion" in the perjorative sense but quite literally. Add to this the distortion that is bound to occur as a result of the selection of what to portray and we can see that it is quite possible for the performance to be a long way away from the actuality. I am not saying, by the way, that it was - after all, I wasn't at the inquiry - just that it could be. So what? Does all of this really matter? Should we not just judge the play as a piece of theatre or television drama and leave it at that? Yes, I do think it matters. As I said at the beginning, this is a very powerful piece and paints a shameful picture of the state of race relations in Britain. Is it accurate? I really don't know, particularly in relation to the Metropolitan Police. My own very limited experience would suggest that there are very strong racial tensions within our society, and certainly the incidence of race-related crime seems to be shamefully high. However I would be very wary of basing any judgements on The Colour of Justice alone. The problem with this piece, and with all plays of the "dramadoc" variety, is that they are more "drama" than "doc". They cannot give a true picture of the events they portray, any more than Shakespeare's Richard III gives a true picture of that monarch's reign. Modern research has shown that Richard Gloucester was not the evil Dick Crookback that Shakespeare portrays: he had swallowed Tudor propaganda hook, line and sinker. The Colour of Justice is drama. It is powerful and moving. It stirs in us pity, fear and condemnation. There is no resolution at the end, of course: it is a continuing drama. It is a shameful indictment of the Metropolitan Police and of British society in general. But it is a play: it is not reality. It may well - it probably does - reflect reality, but it is a play. We mustn't forget that. Links The full transcript of the inquiry, in .pdf format, can be downloaded from here. From the same site you can also find details of the Lawrence family's campaign for justice. The Home Office has a section of their website devoted to the inquiry here. There is a review of the theatre version of the play on the Time Out site. Articles Indices: |
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