'Mass' review — grieving parents seek justice and answers in this powerful school shooting drama

Read our review of Fran Kranz's play Mass, now in performances at the Donmar Warehouse to 6 June.

Summary

• Fran Kranz's play Mass debuts at the Donmar Warehouse
• The show is based on his 2021 film of the same name
• Two sets of grieving parents meet in the aftermath of a school shooting
• The powerful cast includes Monica Dolan and Adeel Akhtar

How do you prepare to bring families together for one of the most painful experiences of their lives? Will they need tissues? Snacks? Gentle lighting? Such are the worries at the start of Fran Kranz’s debut play – an adaptation of his 2021 film – as a small team prepares to oversee one such meeting in a function room at a modern Episcopal church in an unspecified American town.

The bulk of what follows is a hyper-naturalistic restorative justice session – one that brings the audience as close to such an agonising process as most of us will come, if we’re lucky. It’s a masterful piece of writing from Kranz: every utterance counts, and each line is a turn of a cog that keeps this grim yet poignant narrative moving.

However, Carrie Cracknell’s production can feel hands-off, perhaps through an intention to let the text breathe. Unlike James Graham’s Punch, which also tells a story of restorative justice, but paints a fuller picture beyond the brave meeting at its centre, here we really do just watch two sets of parents hash things out at length, which grows monotonous.

It’s also interesting that this very American story is receiving its world premiere in London. I wonder whether it might resonate more deeply in the US, where it’s set, and where there are tens of incidents involving guns in schools every year, with 75% of pupils reportedly worrying about school shootings. Still, it will no doubt find an audience here – we’re a nation morbidly fascinated by true crime, after all – and it is certainly well told.

A clever drip-feed of reveals means that when the parents come face to face, it’s a while before it’s clear which set belongs to the victim, and which the perpetrator. But it eventually transpires that a school shooting has taken place, and that both teenage sons have ultimately lost their lives, leaving their families traumatised several years on. As the parents of the shooter harrowingly point out, it’s hard to grieve when you’ve been demonised by your community, and even struggled to find a church willing to do the burial.

It’s powerfully performed by a core cast of four, each of whom wears their character’s deeply etched pain in different but wholly understandable ways. As Linda, a trembling and tense Monica Dolan instantly locks eyes with Lyndsey Marshal’s fellow mother Gail, whose own suffering has mellowed into a desire to understand. As Linda’s tongue-tied ex-husband Richard, Paul Hilton is a man whose stature has diminished, but he remains determined to grasp the facts. It’s Gail’s husband Jay, portrayed by an anguished Adeel Akhtar, who we sense remains at ground zero with his loss – there’s still some disbelief in each of its outbursts.

Much of their terse conversation is spent trying to get to the root cause of the blame. As Anna Yates’s set slowly revolves, allowing us to see each of their faces – and the story from each of their perspectives – they debate whether it was the young shooter’s parenting, a school move, too much time online, bullying, or something innate that ultimately made him load the gun.

Kranz doesn’t attempt to weigh in with unfounded answers, but as time progresses and warm chinks of light begin to glow more brightly through the A-frame roof of Yates’s set, a quiet point is made about the power of reconciliation.

Mass is at the Donmar Warehouse to 6 June.

Photo credit: Mass (Photos by Richard Hubert Smith)