The 56

Verbatim theatre surged up a few years ago from the angry bones of companies keen to respect those who had stories to tell, by using their own words. It’s certainly a powerful genre. Hearing the actual news broadcast from the 1985 Bradford City football stadium fire, at the opening of The 56, there is a horrific immediacy that knots the stomach.

The verbatim accounts are then taken up by the cast of three, who sit on football benches and take turns to each tell their own section. It’s the small details that hurt the most; the pride with which Danni Phillips says "we had a drink of coffee" before the match, as if that was a rare treat now forever tainted; or her admission that at the time she could only think "I’ve burnt my hands", oblivious of the tragedy unfolding behind her.

But these moments are occasional flashes in a script so rigidly caged by integrity that it loses sight of the fact that drama, and not description, is what moves the heart. Unlike Instabili Vaganti’s Made in ILVA, which transforms the misery of many into the searing pain of an everyman, The 56 is so concerned with the minutiae of authenticity that it does nothing with the material other than transmit it. It is moving in parts—particularly Phillips’s story—but begs the question; why not just read the transcript or listen to a recording of the real survivors instead?