Who are the “monsters” of Niklas Radström’s play? Are they the two children who killed a third child? Are they the 38 adults who saw the trio go by and did not intervene? Are they the audience, who, the play’s chorus suggests, have turned up to watch a piece of art about the murder of an infant? Or is “monster” a meaningless term that neatly keeps horrific events at arm’s length?

Radström’s play asks pertinent questions – the most pertinent of all being when one should intervene in events and whether we all have some kind of collective responsibility for the tragic outbursts of violence in a society full to bursting with cameras, screens and observers. But, although its intentions are admirable, I found it a troubling piece – and not for the right reasons.

The Swedish playwright examines the murder of James Bulger, the two-year-old taken from a Merseyside shopping centre in 1993 and killed by two 10-year-old boys. Four actors swap the parts, never attempting to inhabit a role. They deliver extracts from the boys’ interrogations and from their parents’ statements, but they also assume the role of a Greek chorus, narrating, making observations and addressing the audience: “Are you prepared to intervene?”

This non-naturalistic approach avoids sensationalism, with the playwright querying his own motives and those of the audience. Yet there is something uncomfortable about the play (translated by Gabriella Berggren). It seeks to challenge the audience, but seems sometimes to hector and even patronise them. Its tone is heavy-handed, as if it doesn’t trust them to feel the gravity of the subject. And the repeated suggestion that they could intervene, when they patently can’t, labours the point.

It is at its best when it quietly, painstakingly, repeats interrogations or the parents’ statements. These verbatim passages are revealing and complex. The actors (Lucy Ellinson, Sandy Grierson, Jeremy Killick and Victoria Platt) have great integrity and intensity and Christopher Haydon’s production moves fluently and urgently (though the set of flickering, buzzing surveillance cameras seems antithetical to the calm, meditative surroundings advocated by the writer). This is a serious attempt to address difficult questions, but it might go further if it didn’t keep reminding us of that so strenuously. ★★★☆☆

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