This gruelling play, which began life as a 2021 film by actor-turned-writer/director Fran Kranz, is a sincere exploration of a process of restorative justice following a US school shooting. The stage version is realised with crystalline focus by Carrie Cracknell and acted with deep, pressing conviction by a central quartet of fine actors. It’s a tough watch – no one expects sunshine and happy endings with this subject matter – but that’s not the reason I kind of hated it.
The script is a heartfelt but manipulative and relentless act of hand-wringing in the face of America’s hapless obeisance before the gun lobby. I was constantly reminded of the headline on the article that satirical outlet The Onion publishes after each successive firearm atrocity in the States: “’No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Happens.”
Oddly, Kranz’s play arrives in the wake of James Graham’s multi-award-winning Punch, another play about restorative justice. And like Punch, it mostly focuses on people in a room, talking about the worst thing that could have happened to them.
In Punch, we also saw the buildup to and impulsive enactment of the pivotal crime. In Mass, it’s not even named until we’re 30 minutes into the 90-minute running time, though by then we’ve picked up heavy hints of its general shape. Seven years ago Hayden, the teenage son of Linda (Monica Dolan) and Richard (Paul Hilton), killed ten students at his high school with guns borrowed from a friend, before shooting himself.
He chose a class to massacre at random, rather than targeting specific perceived enemies. Though he left a confession his motives remain inexplicable. But after seven years of public anger and legal hedging, the parents of one victim, Gail (Lyndsey Marshal) and Jay (Adeel Akhtar) have sought a sitdown with Hayden’s folks to find an explanation, and someone or something to blame.
It takes place in a bland room at an Episcopal church, fussily and nervously facilitated by three peripheral characters, including young Brandon (Amari Bacchus) who, it is implied, was a survivor of the slaughter. The fact no one thought this might be an issue is the first queasy sign that Kranz is rigging the narrative for maximum devastation. The table they are seated at slowly revolves, so we get to gawp equally at everyone’s pain.
Mass deals with big themes: essentially, whether monsters are born, made or just snap into being. Was Hayden radicalized online, by playing Call of Duty or by his gun-nut chum? Should Linda and Richard have reacted differently to the red flags of their son’s isolation? Is their agony of lesser or greater volume and importance than the other couple’s?
Kranz was apparently spurred into writing and directing the film of Mass by the birth of his daughter, and by observing South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. His acting roots show in the way he meticulously plots the couples’ conversation, enabling his cast to display the peaks and troughs of grief. The four start off stricken and take turns to get yet more upset.
Akhtar is superb as ordinary-Joe Jay, folksy but with a short fuse, and so is Marshall as the wilted, exhausted Gail. Dolan vibrates throughout with anxiety like a plucked string, and Hilton is drawn and harrowed, like an animated but sometimes defensive corpse. Linda and Richard’s marriage broke up after their son’s crime and their body language under Cracknell’s direction is a masterclass in attempted and abandoned consolation.
Maybe my problem with Mass is that it’s too slick, too facile, a neat emotional workout for actors and an easy win for a smugly liberal audience. Especially one in Britain, where there hasn’t been a single school shooting since handguns were banned following the Dunblane massacre in 1996. Kranz addresses the issue of America’s gun culture without really tackling or unpacking it.
And he writes a quasi-spiritual ending that’s unearned. Without giving too much away, and despite what I said at the top of this review, it features sunshine and a sense of graceful resolution, if not exactly happiness. Like the thoughts and prayers that American politicians offer the ongoing roster of the bereaved, it feels lazy and hollow.
To 6 June, donmarwarehouse.com.
