When teenager Lizzie's dad is killed in a terrorist bombing, she lives with the aftermath of the explosion ringing in her ears, head and heart. So scarred is she, it is as if she was there when the Semtex exploded. Twenty years later, and with a teenage daughter of her own, Lizzie gets the opportunity to meet Ned, the man who placed the bomb that killed her father.
Kevin Dyer's play was inspired by the remarkable story of Jo Berry, whose father died in the Brighton bombing, and Pat Magee, the former IRA activist responsible for placing the bomb, and their attempts to find forgiveness and friendship, ultimately working together for peace. It's a timely, multi-faceted work, and an emotionally explosive piece of drama.
Dyer's play has its rough and ready moments, and it doesn't quite succeed in embedding Lizzie's relationship with her daughter convincingly into the map of the drama. But it also has a huge amount going for it, including a wonderful ability to dramatise the internal, and an understanding that Lizzie must learn to relinquish victimhood as much as Ned must relinquish violence. Some of Lizzie's father's final words to his daughter are: "If you're in deep water, and somebody offers to help, let them pull you out." Good advice.
It is the personal rather than the political that gets the upper hand, but Dyer does give Ned an opportunity to explain why he did what he did, and the play manages to move you emotionally as well as making you consider issues of justice and whether violence can be justified.
Alison Heffernan's clever tilted set, covered with bomb debris and that of everyday life, strongly suggests lives displaced by an act of violence. And Joe Sumsion's production offers some strong images as it edges towards the idea that we must free ourselves of the past in order to live fully in the present.
· At the Hawth, Crawley, tonight. Box office: 01293 553636. Then touring.
