GLITCH at the Minghella Theatre
★★★★
“Liz Elvin doesn’t give us theatrical fireworks, but something much more subtle and involving”
What has been described as ‘the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history’ is the focus of this interesting new play by Zannah Kearns. It is drawn from Nick Wallis’ seminal 2021 exposé of the Post Office Horizon scandal. It tells the story up to 2019, when after a joint legal action, over 500 Postmasters and Postmistresses were granted a settlement of £58 million.
The play was commissioned by the University of Reading and was developed with help from their Law Department. It is performed by Reading’s RABBLE Theatre which has a special remit to ‘tell local stories of national significance’. Playwright Kearns based her story on her interviews with one Post Mistress called Pam Stubbs who modestly says she ‘got really cross’ when she first noticed false transactions on the screen of the branch she was running from a Portakabin near Reading.
A cast of four include seasoned performer Elizabeth Elvin as Pam Stubbs. Stubbs was unique amongst the other litigants in that she kept meticulous records which enabled the Horizon system to be directly challenged. Liz Elvin doesn’t give us theatrical fireworks, but something much more subtle and involving. We see a mild-mannered woman who is genuinely puzzled by the total and catastrophic upending of her life because the Post Office stubbornly refused to admit their software was faulty.
Laura Penneycard, Sabina Netherclift and Fayez Baksh deftly take multiple roles as customers, shop assistant, barrister, judge and other litigants. The play is performed in a ‘black box’ space for which Caitlin Abbott has designed a set of wheeled units which are moved around by the cast.
From ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ to TV’s ‘Crown Court’, court room scenes are bread and butter drama. ‘Glitch’ features some gripping moments drawn directly from the legal transcript. For me, some of the other writing and direction by Gemma Colcough and Gareth Taylor still has a somewhat sketchy quality about it. I wanted a little more drama and less understatement, even if some of it (say) came in the form of techniques like projected graphics.
The founders of RABBLE describe this show as ‘stage one’ for the piece. They hope that with more financial support it will evolve more fully. This worthwhile and involving play certainly deserves a much wider showing.
GLITCH at the Minghella Theatre
Reviewed on 2nd July 2024
by David Woodward
Photography by Annabel Crichard
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GLITCH
GLITCH
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