A cock-up at a torture training centre leads to the world’s worst press conference in this entertaining farce. A loud, psychotic and schizophrenic interrogator and his similarly unstable and idiotic (and also mute) trainee spend the first half-hour in fits of clowning against a backing theme of being utterly horrible towards one’s fellow man. This ends with an incriminating photograph, one of several Abu Gharib references. The second act is the delivery of a whitewash report, although the two authors are also quite mad and fail spectacularly in maintaining the cover-up.
The nuanced and high-energy acting is perfect for the comically surreal script, and seeing torture discussed so flippantly subtly and indirectly draws attention to the madness in the tactic. There is a poignant moment at the end of the first act whereby the mute trainee turns into the crazed bureaucrat that was his mentor: this comment on the institutionalisation of inhumanity is handled seriously, in stark contrast to the rest of the play which, although topical, is utterly ridiculous.
4/5
Bernie Greenwood
