'The Riots' brings London summer mayhem to the stage

Three months after the riots which rocked London and other British cities, a London theatre has tackled the subject byconducting its own investigation based on more than 50 hours of testimony. "Frustrated, angry, English": one of the characters in the play "The Riots" describes the looters and rioters who ran amok on the streets for four nights in August. Who were they and what were their motivations? And could it all flare up again tomorrow? Those questions will remain unanswered after the coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron ruled out holding an inquiry. Undeterred, Nicolas Kent, director of the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, has turned the spotlight onto the riots after previously using testimonies and facts to stage plays addressing Iraq, Afghanistan, the racist murder of a black teenager and even the US-run Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. "I'm a bit of a public inquiry nut," he admitted. "They have a cathartic effect, and they can change society. Since there is no investigation under way, why not conduct one ourselves?" Police, rioters, educators, politicians were interviewed extensively and are represented larger than life on stage in a play written by Gillian Slovo. Some of those approached by the theatre refused to testify, including Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour opposition party. Others were more accommodating, including Iain Duncan Smith, a government minister who blamed the "ghettoization of neighbourhoods" and demanded "a social response." The reactions to the unrest have largely bridged the traditional left-right divide. Diane Abbott, a Labour MP from the ethnically mixed London district of Hackney, has called for looters to be punished as an example to others, although she also diagnosed the unrest as "a classic race riot." Race riots? If the spark was the death of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old black man, in a police operation on Thursday August 4, the resulting chaos owed more to a general emotional release, or a "big carnival," an actor portraying a youth worker said. Police figures have shown that around 40 percent of the 3,000 people arrested were white, 39 percent were black and eight percent were Asian. The first wave of violence swept through the north London neighbourhood of Tottenham, where Duggan was shot and where riots have flared in the past, catching police completely off guard. Metropolitan police Chief Inspector Graham Dean was trimming his parents' hedge when the violence flared, while the bulk of the local force was mobilised at a football match. At 5:00 p.m., Duggan's family, enraged by not having been informed of the death by police, went with relatives to the police station to demand an explanation. After fruitless hours of waiting for a police response, the group left the scene at dusk, when the atmosphere became heated. The play dissects the sequence of errors and incompetence that followed -- the protesters were not dispersed and overwhelmed police were stranded at the police station, unable to prevent the torching of two cars which signalled an explosion of looting. The victims are the residents of the neighbourhoods, who must dash to escape the flames from a carpet shop set on fire by rioters, and the owners of small shops, mostly of Pakistan origin. Graham Dean thought that "hatred of the police" was a major motivation -- coupled with the chance for some opportunist looting of trainers and electronic goods in "an August where nothing (normally) happens." "I thought wow, I need to take advantage of the situation because this is never going to happen again," crowed a jubilant young robber, arms stuffed full of goods. The Daily Telegraph's theatre critic Charles Spencer, reviewing the play, said: "In this philosophy he is surely little different from the bankers who award themselves whopping great bonuses despite bringing our economy to its knees." The play does not offer a definitive solution, but highlights a number of alarming facts and figures. The budget for education, health and social welfare will decrease by 21 billion pounds (24.5 billion euros, $33 billion) over the next three years and a special education allowance paid to 16-year-olds to encourage them to study, has been scrapped. And in Tottenham, where the riots began, there are 34 unemployed people for each vacancy.