You may think a play based on the inquiry into the Bloody Sunday killings might not make searing-hot theatre, but the boss of the Tricycle Theatre begs to differ, writes Richard Hodkinson

Nicolas Kent is not a man one could imagine settling back to enjoy the latest Ben Elton-penned musical in the West End. The artistic director of Kilburn’s Tricycle Theatre sees the stage as being right at the heart of British social and political life, not as a mere light entertainment adjunct.
His seventh collaboration with the Guardian journalist Richard Norton-Taylor, Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry, has just opened at the Tricycle.
It promises to provide sleepless nights for the British armed forces and the government, just as a previous production based around the Stephen Lawrence inquiry proved uncomfortable viewing for the Metropolitan Police.
“I think this is something theatre should be doing,” he explains. “One of its roles should be to criticise the politics of the day, to challenge social norms and to make people think. Obviously it can entertain at the same time, but its great if a play says to people ‘hey, have you thought about this? Well you should; it’s a big issue.’ I see theatre very much as part of a national debate.”
It is an approach that might not be expected to put many bums on seats, but the Tricycle’s series of productions based on edited transcript of legal and governmental inquiries have proved both popular with audiences and influential with governments.
The cage-rattling series of plays might never have become a reality had it not been for Kent and Norton-Taylor’s shared enthusiasm for tennis.
“We used to play regularly on a Sunday,” Mr Kent says. “At the time – back in the early 1990s – Richard was coming back daily from the Scott inquiry (on the Arms to Iraq case) which he was covering for the Guardian. As we played, he would tell me how extraordinary it all was.”
“The inquiry had been going on for about one-and-a-half years. Mrs Thatcher and various people had given evidence and it was all very interesting, but there was very little in the papers about it. Or rather, coverage would appear in short bursts, but there was no overview. I suggested writing a play on the subject but Richard took some persuading.
“Eventually he agreed and we put it together in about two-and-a-half months from edited transcripts.”
Kent’s colleagues at the Tricycle didn’t initially share his enthusiasm for the project, however.
He said: “When I told the box office staff what my plans were, they just said ‘Oh, that’s it, we’re all going on holiday for a month. No-one’s going to come and see this’. But, to my relief, it was a great success and moved beyond the Tricycle to be done on the BBC, published as a book and performed at the Houses of Parliament.”
The initial scepticism of the Tricycle staff is understandable, however; public inquiries are not known for the their white-knuckle excitement factor. Why has there proved to be such an appetite for productions the scripts for which are, after all, reproduced verbatim from inquiry transcripts?
“People find them intensely dramatic – in many ways quite angry-making and funny,” he says. “They prick the pomposity of officialdom; in the case of Lawrence this was the police, in Bloody Sunday it is the army.
“The issues raised are often topical, also. Bloody Sunday is based on an inquiry into events that happened in 1972 when a whole lot of people on a demonstration against internment were killed in cold blood. But what happened then is happening again in many ways in Iraq. You’ve got paras in Iraq accused of murder and families of military policemen killed in a riot saying the riot wouldn’t have occurred if the paras hadn’t been there, because they fomented it.”
These, of course, are not the views of many in the armed services or in Whitehall. Do Norton-Taylor and Kent acknowledge that they risk accusations of political bias?
“We make every effort to present both sides of the argument as strongly as possible,” asserts Kent.
“In all the years we’ve been working on these productions I don’t think one newspaper review, whether from the left, right or centre, have accused us of bias. Some may have questioned why we left out this testimony or that, but we’ve never been attacked for being biased.”
Nicholas Kent has been a fixture at the Tricycle for over 20 years. In that time the venue has developed a reputation as the country’s most vital political theatre. Perhaps modestly, Kent puts this down to being positioned “at the heart of the most culturally diverse area of London and, by implication, the most culturally diverse area in the world”.
The Tricycle’s extensive education programme – aimed at benefiting the disadvantaged and disenfranchised – indicates, however, that it is its creative director’s commitment to place theatre at the centre of public life will continue to stimulate work, like Bloody Sunday, that is of compelling social relevance.

• Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Norton Inquiry Tricycle Theatre, 269 Kilburn High Road, NW6 020 7328 1000 Runs until May 7.