Rendering 7

The article "Gibraltar, Arcola Theatre, London" was published by Dominic Cavendish on March 29, 2013. It was discussed that there’s potential in Gibraltar, a play about an IRA cell gunned down by an SAS team in 1988, but James Robert Carson’s production may leave your interest foundering.

In addition, what are your feelings abo

ut Mairead Farrell, Sean Savage and Daniel McCann? Let me jog your memory. They were the three members of an IRA cell gunned down by an SAS team outside a petrol station on Winston Churchill Avenue in Gibraltar on March 6 1988. The so-called “Gibraltar Three” had been plotting to detonate a car-bomb near the military band assembled for the weekly changing of the guard at the governor’s residence.

Speaking of the situation, does that lack of sympathy matter? I think it does – there’s a fine line between intelligent detachment and emotional non-involvement. “Gibraltar”, a fictionalized retelling of the aftermath of the shootings that draws on verbatim evidence, usefully re-airs valid questions about how the truth is obtained, if ever, yet it remains stubbornly and at times fatally lacking in human-interest drama.

It’s necessary to point out that Brett is a former newspaperman – he was the legal manager to The Times and Sunday Times. With the help of co-writer Sian Evans, he frames the evening in media terms, suggesting that investigative journalism which breaks the rules and takes its time might get nearer the heart of the matter than a more “legit” approach that dashes after headline-grabbing nuggets of information.

It’s important to point that the explosive ITV 1988 current affairs episode Death on the Rock is re-imagined as “Ambush”, the work of a serious-minded but inexperienced reporter called Amelia (placid, pretty Greer Dale-Foulkes); her star witness is Karina Fernandez’s Rosa (plainly modelled on the vilified local figure Carmen Proetta), whose statements contradict other accounts and assumptions in the IRA’s favour. Looking on with weary scepticism is a hack called Nick (a rumpled, ruminative George Irving), whose line of inquiry takes him into the twilight world of drug-running and Gibraltarian power politics. There’s potential here but with James Robert Carson’s bare-bones, bloodless production running at over two hours, your interest in the convoluted proceedings may well founder sharpish.

I’d like to conclude that You’d be forgiven for feeling nothing – or nothing but cold contempt. This vile little plot of theirs came just months after the Enniskillen Remembrance Day atrocity, one of the most revolting acts of barbarism the IRA had a hand in during the Troubles.