“I remember my knees giving way and thinking, ‘This is it now,’ because I can’t breathe.”
On Monday night, actor Ash Hunter took the stage at London’s National Theater to play Nicholas Burton, one of nearly 300 people trapped in a burning London apartment building six years ago. Hunter spoke Burton’s own words.
“Every breath was just hot black smoke,” the actor said, visibly sweating and breathing fast.
On June 14, 2017, a refrigerator caught fire in a 24-storey London high-rise called Grenfell Tower. That fire should have been easily contained and residents were advised to stay in their apartments. But within minutes, the flames had engulfed the structure, which, according to lax building codes, was clad in a combustible material. It became Britain’s deadliest fire in over a century.
That night, Hunter said in the play, Burton fell asleep watching a DVD, near his wife, Pily, who had Alzheimer’s disease. He was awakened by a pounding on his front door, which he opened, sending thick smoke into the room. Burton knew he couldn’t carry his wife down dozens of flights of stairs, so he took her to the bathroom, where they waited for help.
Burton thought he was going to die, Hunter said onstage. Later, his wife did so and became the 72nd and final victim of the fire.
Burton is one of ten Grenfell residents whose stories will be told in Gillian Slovo’s ‘Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors’, a verbatim play set for August 26 at the National, one of Britain’s premier playhouses. On Monday, some audience members shook their heads as they listened to the survivors’ experiences and the catalog of mismanagement that led to the blaze. Others were in tears at the end of the minimally staged production.
Years after the fire, Grenfell continues to cast a shadow over British life. Most of the units in Grenfell Tower were part of the UK social housing system and the fire drew attention to neglect within that system as well as unsafe building practices across the country. An official investigation into the fire is ongoing, as well as a police investigation.
With so little resolution for the bereaved, some of Britain’s leading cultural institutions and artists have begun creating works about the tragedy. In addition to the National Theater production, the BBC announced plans for a TV drama about the fire earlier this year, and in April artist and director Steve McQueen presented a 24-minute video work at London’s Serpentine Galleries. Filmed by helicopter, McQueen’s “Grenfell” shows the burned-out tower block as it appeared in December 2017, days before it was hidden behind white plastic sheeting.
“I was determined it would never be forgotten,” McQueen said in a statement accompanying the piece.
Survivors of the tragedy and local residents have had mixed reactions to these projects. Shortly after the BBC’s TV drama was announced, Cecilia Corzo, a resident of the Grenfell Tower housing project, started an online petition calling for the show to be cancelled. The petition has more than 61,000 signatures.
Corzo wrote in an email interview that she found the idea of anyone wanting to see a dramatization of the fire “overwhelmingly disgusting.” Survivors have been waiting for justice for years, she wrote, and in that time “the only thing that seems to move fast are plans to make entertainment” of the tragedy.
Slovo, the playwright, said in a recent interview at the theater that she understood such reactions, but hoped the play’s critics would “come and see what we’ve done.” Her goal was to “amplify” survivors’ voices, Slovo said, adding that the fire was an important example of how governments and corporations “put profit before people’s lives.” Grenfell “is a lesson for all of us, not just in Britain,” she said.
Slovo, a South African-born playwright who has previously created several verbatim plays, including one about British riots, began work on “Grenfell” six months after the fire. She said she was shocked that the fire could take place in a city as wealthy as London, and that the voices of the survivors were missing from most media coverage and official discussion of the tragedy. Instead, the tabloids were full of uninformed theories or articles portraying the bereaved as “poor or as asylum seekers,” Slovo said.
Over several years, Slovo conducted about 80 interviews and sent the survivors their transcripts so they could cut anything they didn’t want performed on stage. She supported those interviews with transcripts from the official government investigation.
Converting that material into the play had its challenges, Slovo said, including “not wanting to turn this into a melodrama in any way” and making sure the play wasn’t traumatizing.
To try to guarantee that “Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors” is performed under unusual circumstances. The production begins with the light of the house and the actors introduce themselves and the survivor each plays. The cast then assures the audience that the play will not contain any footage of the actual fire and that theatergoers are free to leave the venue at any time and return when they are ready. During previews, therapists sat in the audience to provide additional support.
Pearl Mackie, who plays Natasha Elcock, a woman who used bathwater to put out flames and lost her uncle in the blaze, said she was angry at the horror of the event before reading the script. Even after she was cast, Mackie said, “she worried that my own personal reaction was something that would happen every night, and that it wouldn’t serve the truth of the person I’m playing.”
But after meeting Elcock, Mackie said she realized she could represent community fully on stage, rather than defining Elcock by this one tragedy. The play is “the most important thing I’ve ever done,” Mackie said.
All of the survivors portrayed have been invited to see the play, and some have done so. Ed Daffarn, who lived on the 16th floor, said in a recent interview that he couldn’t find the words to describe how he felt when he looked at it. “Almost as a defense, I distanced myself,” he said.
He knew other survivors couldn’t bring themselves to go, Daffarn added, but he insisted the play and other creative Grenfell projects were vital to keeping the tragedy in the public eye. Homes across England were still enclosed in flammable lining, Daffarn said, adding “we haven’t had a single ring of handcuffs.”
At the conclusion of Monday night’s performance, a short film was shown featuring survivors and bereaved families – including Burton – discussing their lives today and what they wanted audiences to get out of the play.
The cast then gave the audience placards in the shape of green hearts – a symbol associated with Grenfell – with words like “Justice” written on them, and asked everyone to follow them outside.
Silently, the audience did as asked: hundreds of people carried those signs high into the London night. For a moment the evening became more than theatre. It became a call for change.
