Deep Cut

Something is deeply awry at Deep Cut Barracks. Between 1995 and 2002, five young soldiers died from gunshot wounds in circumstances which, according to the families, have never fully been explained. While cursory internal investigations, and the subsequent 2006 Blake Review recorded verdicts of probable suicide, countless inconsistencies remain – inconsistencies which the families, and Deep Cut writer Philip Ralph, have spent years investigating.

Deep Cut focuses on the adoptive parents of Private Cheryl James, found dead with a single bullet to the head in November 1995. Employing verbatim dialogue from interviews with the family, the journalists and forensic professionals involved, and the official statements and reports, Ralph makes a compelling case for a full public inquiry into the tragic deaths. But Deep Cut is not simply a rehashing of the evidence, rather, it is a powerful and carefully crafted human drama.

Offering a view into the James’s living room, the production amply communicates not just the family’s grief, but also the alternating determination and despair in their campaign. Ralph’s real knockout conceit, however, is to have the forensic expert, the journalist and the government minister stomp through the living room to deliver their set pieces, elsewhere shouting into the room from amongst the audience. Oblivious to the grieving parents, their presence in the house is metaphorical rather than literal, offering a sense of the intrusiveness of officialdom, and the disturbing lack of answers or accountability as the family’s enquiries are bounced from minister to mandarin. Meanwhile, documents and boxes increasingly clutter the stage—and by implication, the family's life—in the run-up to the impossibly complex Blake Review. Visually arresting and emotionally affecting, this is not just overtly political, but highly theatrical.

“Journalism,” we are told early on, “dropped the ball.” Deep Cut shows that theatre is more than capable of picking the ball up and—if it is to fulfil its aim—convincing an audience to run with it.