In 2010 a highly respected Canadian Colonel entered a police interrogation room, and over the course of ten hours confessed to multiple counts of sexual assault, rape and murder. The video of that police interview is available online and is the inspiration behind Jamie Armitage’s gripping police procedural drama, An Interrogation playing at Summerhall this Edinburgh Fringe.
Armitage includes many nods to the source material in this play, including the detectives opening gambit of “have you ever been interviewed in a room like this before”. Relocated to an unnamed English town, in this version it is Cameron Andrews who is suspected of abducting a young woman. The screen on the back wall tells us that the first 72 hours are crucial in a missing person’s case and we’re already on hour 68.
Andrews is a well-respected member of the community, with high level security clearance and contacts at the highest level of government. He’s voluntarily come in to aid the police with their investigation on a Sunday, when he should be cooking dinner for his elderly mother. Detective Ruth Palmer knows what’s at stake here and has to tread carefully with the interview technique.
This isn’t a whodunnit so it’s no spoiler to say that we pretty much know from the off that Andrews is guilty, the drama in An Interrogation comes from the way his confession is extracted. Cameras on stage project on to the back wall, recreating the sense of those online videos from the Canadian case. Armitage has significantly less than ten hours to play with – this being a typical one hour Fringe show, so there’s not quite the time to build up enough tension before the final confession comes.
That said, this is an ingenious and enthralling piece of theatre; for most of the play it seems that Andrews has the upper hand over Palmer, who is pretending to be a rookie and is gently massaging the businessman’s ego. But he has been lulled into a false sense of security.
It’s chilling in places, accentuated by an additional narrative where an older and more senior policeman is effectively manipulating Palmer, forcing her to do the interview alone. It asks us to consider our perspective in more ways than one.
Jamie Ballard and Bethan Cullinane are superb in the roles of Andrews and Palmer. The onstage cameras capture even the slightest change in facial expression so there really is nowhere for either of them to hide, and as an audience member you find yourself crosschecking what you see live with what’s on screen to confirm if you think you’re hearing the truth.
An Interrogation might benefit from being extended, just to really maximise the impact of the final confession, but it’s without a doubt a fantastic script from Armitage that keeps the audience hooked from the very beginning.
