BWW Reviews: SHRAPNEL: 34 FRAGMENTS OF A MASSACRE, Arcola Theatre, March 16 2015

It is, of course, trite to say that war is a brutal, messy, tragic business - but it is. For all the language of "surgical strikes" and technology that makes the dishing of death a distant event, for those on the receiving end of the bullets and bombs, it's no video game. There's no reset button when families are wiped out by shells directed by drones and fired from thousands of feet in the air, guided by lasers and satellites.

One such event happened in 2011 and is the subject of Anders Lustgarten's Shrapnel: 34 Fragments of a Massacre (continuing at the Arcola Theatre until 2 April). 34 unarmed Kurdish villagers - smuggling diesel and other mundane stuff across the Turkish-Iraqi border - were killed by Turkey's armed forces acting on American information in what has become known as the Roboski Massacre. Told in a series of short scenes, the play builds up a mosaic of contributors to the slaughter: each bearing some responsibility; none bearing all.

Naturally, there's the military giving orders, but there's the rabble-rousing nationalist journalist collecting awards and the TV producer who self-censors reports from the border country. There's the arms salesman with his slick patter and ISIS videos and the geeky guys building the instruments of death like it's school Meccano club. There's even the villagers themselves, men who fail to heed the warnings of the women not to venture out once more across the border - but what else can they do to put food on their tables?

While the picture builds, a tiny detail impressed itself on me. One of the teenage lads who lost his life left behind a dog: a small one that probably darted between the kids' legs, twisting and turning as it joined in the football games played in the village. The lad had called his dog Messi - as kids will have done the world over. Messi lamented his lost owner - and this play will make you share that little dog's distress at what happened on a mountain track in inhospitable lands at the direction of the people "we support" as the good guys in a bad fight. War is a meesy business indeed.

Photo Nick Rutter

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