Any one of these accounts of the benefits of a terrible tragedy might make us uncomfortable. But this play cynically digs deeper into other disturbing aspects to these characters. Every night on the news there’s literally always some sort of massively catastrophic end-of-the-world shit going down: genocide, earthquake, terrorism, school shooting – it’s endless, you know? And I always wonder ‘how would I cope, if that happened to me?’ I was waiting for a play date with my daughter on Fulham Common when the planes were flying over us’, Stuart Slade, writer of the critically acclaimed BU21 remembers, ‘and my daughter (now 6) turns to me and asks ‘Daddy, what would happen if one of those planes crashed?’’. It was at this moment when the show, dealing thoroughly and comprehensively with the topic of terrorism in modern cities by imagining a shot-down aircraft colliding with West London, came to the writer.

As you’ll have gathered, the piece eschews any semblance of a hushed, reverential tone in favour of disarming frankness. This can take your breath away with the depth of its moral challenge. Ana, a Romanian waitress who was sunbathing on Eel Brook Common and suffered appalling burns from the aviation fuel, says she does not know whether it’s a miracle or a curse that the human body can live through so much. But she certainly deplores the force – “God or adrenaline or whatever” – that kept a young mother, shredded by the blast down one side “like pulled pork”, in existence for just long enough to learn that her baby had perished. Or the candour can make you gasp with uneasy laughter at the play's refusal to be politically correct and at its determination to question its own procedures. This is both thought-provoking and funny, persevere to act two and you’ll go home theatrically fulfilled.

Latest Articles

Absolutely. I’m over the moon to see this piece given further life. I always felt it was a play that was extremely relevant and would become no less relevant over time. It’s fantastic for Kuleshov [Theatre] to be starting 2017 in the West End. We are a company that was born in the latter part of 2014 to stage Stuart’s first full-length play, Cans. So in a relatively short time we’ve gone from playing above pubs to playing in Trafalgar Square.

We might be uncomfortable with the cynicism and the way that it seems by the end of the play to suggest that the Muslim character Clive might improbably become extremely religious as a result of a failed personal relationship. Matt Bond directs with a fine brush and a pallet full of passion – he has drilled his company into making the most of what Slade has given him to work with and uses the intimate acting space to full dramatic effect. The characters' youth is crucial. This is a generation that has grown up with terrorism. They've waited all their lives for this, conditioned to see the danger on their doorstep. "The whole thing was just so unreal," Thalissa gawps –"like being in a film." So you know how on the news these days there's just this endless stream of horrendous shit going down, like every single night? Suicide bombs, mass shootings, genocides, drone strikes, school massacres – it's like the end of the world or something... And you're kind of like – "Could I even cope if that stuff happened to me?"'

Sadly, the choice to stay downstairs for another drink was too tempting for some audience members, which was a great pity because act two is where the cleverness of Slade makes his a voice well worth listening to. Amongst the trauma and suffering lurks an awful lot of humour… gallingly graphic, desperately bleak, heartrendingly sad and quite, quite hilarious' Exeunt Magazine Slade’s play is far from flawless, it’s overlong and so full of f***s from every character that it often dulls and distances, rather than embraces.

However fictional, this event reminds us of the tragedies that occur nowadays with frightening regularity – school massacres, suicide bombs, mass shootings… Pretty grim subject for a play performed at the theatre in the very heart of the West End, but the location – between the main tourist attractions (as well as terrorist targets): Big Ben and Trafalgar Square – makes the subject even more relevant.If you’re auditioning for drama school, you need to come up with a pretty great contemporary monologue choice that shows you know a bit of contemporary drama and not just the stuff you did at school.