Between 1995 and 2002, four army cadets training at Surrey’s Princess Royal (Deepcut) Barracks died in circumstances that have remained ambiguous to this day. Mired in military bureaucracy, the cases saw little light of day until an investigation by BBC Frontline Scotland lifted the lid in May 2002. The ensuing media furore and the snowballing scandal culminated in the Armed Forces minister ordering a 15-month examination into what went wrong. What came out the other end in March 2006 – and the entire thing was carried out behind closed doors – was a forbidding document that ran to over 2000 pages and a press conference in which Nicholas Blake QC who conducted the review announced his conclusion that the deaths probably were self-inflicted. It was a sobering anticlimax.

The eagerly awaited conclusion reached headlines but that was where the buck stopped. Faced with all the heavy reading, journalists could do little more than relay the summary to the expectant public, and it was only weeks later when the saga was already a lesson learnt that the most engaged journalists were able to come to their own conclusions. Writing for the British Journalism Review, Brian Cathcart’s was that journalists were outmanoeuvred by the government. It knew the workings of the media and adroitly doused the flames of public excitement with a brick-like mass of information that the press couldn’t possibly penetrate in time. By the time Cathcart managed to go through it all and publish his thoughts, Deepcut was no longer news. ‘Journalism,’ says this play, ‘dropped the ball’.

Not that journalists were given noting to chew on. The review stressed that there was a lot to be desired from the way things were run at Deepcut, confirming accusations that bullying had become rife in the institution. It shed light on further aspects of negligence and profligacy which we could shake our heads at, and recommended in no uncertain terms that management needed to be tightened up - and of course it was, promptly and visibly. Then in January 2008, when the media storm had ostensibly calmed, the Armed Forces announced its plans to close Deepcut and put its land on the market for residential development. Mission accomplished.

But for the bereaved parents who continue to campaign for an independent public inquiry the problem extends far beyond the perimeters of a poorly run training ground. Their children died there for reasons that have never been fully clarified, and those in charge have relentlessly buffered their concern, first with a bureaucratic wall and then with a dead-end review undertaken in the shadows. What this affair has revealed is just how inaccessible the system is and just how difficult it is to hold the military to account. That much we saw and that much we mustn’t forget, cries out this play, and on leaving the theatre we are handed print-outs urging us to fight for transparency.

Deep Cut is an example of verbatim theatre: the script is a selection of interview excerpts, documented speeches and press items reproduced word for word and strung together into a narrative. The characters on stage are the cited individuals and feature Nicholas Blake, Brian Cathcart, and Private Cheryl James (1977-1995) parents whose long quest for answers forms the story’s backbone.

A verbatim script is a label of the playwright’s commitment to impartiality in approaching a contentious political subject they wish to discuss, and is driven by the ethos that the truth is shocking enough, that there’s no need for invention. Here there’s a third element. This verbatim script is an emblem of Philip Ralph’s support for Des and Doreen James who have said that after all these years their persisting distress is less about their daughter’s death than about the government’s thievish attitude towards the truth. In the play’s subdued denouement we hear their wistful pleas for a government that can tell the unembellished truth, and the unembellished truth is what Ralph’s script presents, symbolically at least. And by extension we get a play whose very format is a criticism of the way the government responded to Deepcut.

It is, of course, ridiculous to suppose that any piece of theatre can be entirely objective and ‘unembellished’. The very act of staging confers nuance and, besides, Deep Cut is a markedly dramatic play, propelled in this production by a fast tempo, exuberant acting, and a handsome set design. A play could never simply ‘tell the truth’, and the Cardiff-based Sherman Cymru are right not to hold back on theatricality. The aim here is to promote a cause using all the tools of persuasion drama has in store, and dramatic is what it has every right to be (just as court proceedings are).

Deep Cut’s setting is the dour but comfortable James family living room, aka ‘an ordinary household’. An irrelevant but thoughtful Christmas tree sits unobtrusively in the corner – glowing mellowly for Britain’s fragile integrity, shall we say – near a photo of the late Cheryl in uniform. The characters, who generally address their lines to the audience and rarely interact with one another, occupy the James home figuratively. The set is non-essential to the action and adjectival to the play- we could have had, say, an army barracks instead and the script would have kept its coherence for the most part. But Deep Cut is ultimately about the reality of the relationship between Britain’s government and Britain’s governed, and home sweet home is where the heart of the matter lies, where Deepcut hurts most, and where the message of this play is most pertinent. As the plot progresses, stacks of boxes and paperwork gradually pile up on set in an oppressive, tetris-like mess, overwhelming the living room as the affair overwhelms their lives. They need our help to tidy it up.

The overall feel of the production is far from dour or comfortable. It’s a punchy 75 minutes, paced like a rolling news channel during a crisis, with each speech urgently taking over from the last in a raucous fiesta of opinions. The actors drive the play like jet engines, pumping the polemic with fiery vigour. Amy Morgan puts on a wonderfully jubilant performance as Cheryl’s hyperactive best friend at Deepcut, speaking volumes about the happy-go-lucky atmosphere at the barracks in the few lines she has, whilst Pip Donaghy and Janice Cramer in the symbiotic roles of Des and Doreen James keep the play rooted in a poignant family tragedy without ever turning to blatant pathos. Tremors from Derek Hutchinson’s virtuosic turn of the ‘passionate investigative journalist’ archetype as Brian Cathcart could be felt in the Netherlands.

Deep Cut has been widely praised for its hard-hitting journalistic qualities, and scooped a number of awards during its Edinburgh Fringe debut run, including the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award. It has since had a run at London’s verbatim stronghold Tricycle Theatre, and been picked up by Revolution Films (The Road to Guantanamo, A Mighty Heart) for a possible adaptation. As long as Deep Cut tours on, Deepcut blazes on, and Des and Doreen’s campaign continues at www.deepcutfamiliesfightforjustice.co.uk.

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