Monsters is a new hybrid of verbatim theatre, which combines dramatic monologues, interviews and transcripts from the Jamie Bulger murder case. But whilst the best verbatim theatre is fuelled by a need to expose the facts, the media-frenzy surrounding Bulger’s death threatened over-exposure, not neglect. Without this necessary driving-force the play lacks real purpose and veers off track – Niklas Radstrom spends more time questioning how he is telling his story than he does just telling it. The impression is that of a writer more concerned with the process of writing rather than the purpose behind it.

The play works best when Radstrom keeps things simple – when he lets Bulger’s murderers account for their own actions in their own words – but he repeatedly interrupts the action, steps outside his play and starts to deconstruct it. Time and again we are dragged reluctantly from the taut, terrifying interrogation scenes by the Chorus Leader (a preening Jeremy Killick) who philosophises grandly on the play’s ‘bigger’ questions. It is a fairly shoddy device, which takes a sledgehammer to the tension and casts doubt over the writer’s agenda.

It is only when the play stops trying so hard that it starts to speak. On the few occasions Radstrom focuses on one character and an empty stage his writing sheds its pretentious gloss. He stops listening to his own voice and begins to listen to his characters instead. His sympathetic portrayal of the murderers’ parents is brave and stimulating and their monologues are careful, detailed and thick with emotion.

But I still don’t quite trust Radstrom’s approach to his delicate material. This suspicion crystallised with a scene entitled ‘Children Who have Murdered Other Children’. The scene consists of a wailing list from the chorus, detailing a range of child-on-child murders across the ages, with frank economy: ‘In 1920, a seven-year-old drowned a younger child because he wanted his toy aeroplane.’ To write a play that claims to shed some light on such murders, yet bundle this litany of deaths into one shocking throwaway scene, strikes me as insensitive and rash. So whilst Radstrom manages to harness real power from his raw material, I don’t think he has fully recognised the responsibility this power affords.

Till 30 May 2009