Grenfell: Value Engineering, a verbatim account of nightmare proportions

The tragic events of the Grenfell Tower fire are seared into all our brains.

Grenfell: Value Engineering, a verbatim reconstruction of the Grenfell Tower public inquiry, gives us a comprehensive summary of what went wrong. It is a sad tale of incompetence, writes Christopher Walker.

This forensic, and remarkably dispassionate, production is completely ‘not for profit,’ supported by a number of individual donors and charities.

Director Nicholas Kent deliberately chose The Tabernacle Theatre to stage this play as it is “local to Grenfell and known particularly for its strong community links.”

No doubt many in the audience have been directly touched by the events of June 14, 2017.

There are seats available for as little as £2 for those living around Grenfell.

The two essential causes of the tragedy are explored in depth.

The failure of the emergency response on the night, and the incompetent management of the Grenfell refurbishment project.

The actors are all excellent. The real-life identities of who they are portraying are often obscured for obvious reasons, and I shall do the same here.

There was a lot of bravery that night.

More than 70 fire engines and 250 London Fire Brigade firefighters fought for hours. We are introduced to one of them, convincingly portrayed by Daniel Betts.

The disastrous “stay put” policy, operated that night was based on the assumption the fire could be contained in the one apartment where it broke out in a faulty fridge,

and that it was safer to keep other residents in their apartments.

The flaw in this policy was that the cladding on Grenfell Tower far from retarding the spread of the fire, actively assisted it.

As shown in one of many useful slides shown, unbelievably the panels were essentially petrol sandwiched between two thin sheets of aluminium.

Daniel Betts’ character describes how he realised the fire was actually coming into flats from the outside, from the cladding, and was spreading fast.

He failed to communicate this to his superiors, not least because he had a radio with a flat battery. With tunnel vision, and under immense pressure, he sought to rescue one lone child, rather than call for a general evacuation.

Likewise, Claire Lams is very memorable as the poor emergency telephone operator, with only seven months experience “including training,” advising increasingly distraught callers to stay put.

Where was the senior manager making the call to change policy when it was clear what was happening?

In dealing with the longer-term causes, Ron Cook is excellent as QC Richard Millett who forensically takes apart allegedly incompetent local government officers (portrayed well by Polly Kemp and Howard Ward), who failed to control an unscrupulous gang of businessmen responsible for the disastrous refurbishment. Short-cutting “value engineering.”

David Robb is particularly strong, as is his on-stage son Sam Buchanan, unbelievably put in charge of the refurbishment when he was barely out of university.

There is an assertion that another businessman, played by Phil Langhorne, was positively on the make, while Tim Lewis is cringingly good as the buck-passing architect.

Sadly, the problem of unsafe cladding very much remains with us. There are an estimated 700,000 people still trapped living in dangerous homes.

All of us will have different responses to this play. The director suspects underlying racism, but I fear there is more than just that.

I came away with an overwhelming feeling of broader British institutional weakness.

A tendency to muddle along and “hope it will be alright on the night.”

A strange ability to ignore facts, and continue on course to disaster. Something that may also explain the failures of the UK’s current Covid policy.

The people who died at Grenfell deserve better.

Tickets at https://grenfellvalueengineering.com/tickets-theatre-info

Ron Cook as Richard Millett QC - Photos by Tristram Kenton - A scene from Grenfell, Value Engineering