Watching Anthony Weigh’s play, I was
struck by what a powerful diptych it makes with Anthony Neilson’s
Relocated, just opened at the Royal
Court. Two plays involving child abuse, Neilson’s a dark dreamlike
fantasy in which terror is always present but nothing definitively
happens, Weigh’s a parable about the legislative and vigilante
witch-hunt that we could so easily lurch into. Only on my return home
did I learn that
2000 Feet Away
is not a parable. Iowa, where the play is set (in Eldon, location of
Grant Wood’s famous painting
American
Gothic), has passed a law prohibiting registered sex offenders
from living within 2000 feet of locations such as schools, parks,
childcare facilities etc. The result has been that up to 20% of
registered offenders now have no fixed abode, thus achieving precisely
the opposite effect in terms of children’s safety from that intended.
Weigh’s play portrays without prejudice or manipulation a range of
figures: the offender A.G., forced out of his parents’ home, believing
that his crime was consensual and non-damaging; his mother who does not
quite understand and father who seems impatient for the legal eviction
to be served; a motel owner who is coining it in as a result of the
legislation; one of her residents, who takes luciferic glee in hinting
at his activities; even a couple of children caught between the
innocence we demand of them and the knowledge our culture also
requires. (Perhaps the most chilling line of all is when a little girl,
who collects offenders’ mugshots for her mother’s church newsletter,
remarks casually amid a kind of flirtation with the protagonist, “I’m
almost safe. I almost got a chest.”)
The focus, however, is the county deputy, who tries to enforce the law
whilst remaining civil to all, who does not quite understand the
ramifications of the situation but is well aware that there are many
and unpleasant ones, and who is ultimately uncertain even in himself.
Joseph Fiennes is entirely true to the character’s lack of conventional
focus, and works well with Ian Hart as A.G., whose self-effacement
shades into furtiveness. Josie Rourke’s production captures well the
rhythms and tone of Weigh’s script, which so often moves into
simultaneous multi-way shouting as a deliberate tactic of ambiguity;
however, when an audience is seated on three sides of the stage, it
might be better advised not to use a set design that encourages actors
to play only to two.
Written for the Financial
Times.