Gauging someone’s level of success depends on a clear understanding of their main objective. For Gibraltar’s eclectic characters, that varies from political influence and professional advancement to the search for that most slippery catch: “the truth”.
For the play itself, based on the controversial media portrayal of the SAS’s shooting of IRA suspects on the Rock, the aim is far murkier, falling somewhere between detailed documentary reconstruction and compelling theatre. It is markedly more successful in one area than the other.
Drama “inspired by” real events has to strike a balance between authenticity and entertainment, and Gibraltar creators Alastair Brett (a former Times lawyer) and Sian Evans complicate this further by interrogating methods of presenting facts for public consumption in a commercial arena…while presenting such facts to a paying audience in the guise of drama. Escher would have a field day.
