There are all sorts of missing. The world is full of missing persons, and their numbers increase all the time. The space they occupy lies somewhere between what we know about the ways of being alive and what we hear about the ways of being dead. They wander there, unaccompanied and unknowable, like shadows of people.
In 1994, a young Scottish writer finds himself standing outside 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, feeling that the media circus engulfing this now notorious address has overlooked the most important story. Who were these murdered women and why were most of them never reported missing? Read more …
Compelled and troubled by this experience, he begins a pilgrimage that takes him from the south of England back to the bygone Glasgow of the late 1960s and from there out to Irvine and the haunting disappearance of a young boy in his childhood. The new towns promised so much to so many. A fresh start and a different life away from the darkness and danger of the old city, all tied up with a corporation red ribbon round bath taps that had never before been used.
Reuniting director John Tiffany (Black Watch) with author Andrew O'Hagan (Be Near Me) The Missing is a series of gripping encounters that retraces and reanimates the final journeys of sons, daughters, sisters and childhood friends; the missing.The Missing has the same, elusive quality as a drama that it did as a book – an elegiac, emotional tug that is hard to put your finger on.
As keywords, maps and photofit images are projected onto a big screen at the back of the stage, a damningly pertinent portrait emerges of a society so calculatedly splintered that swathes of “killable” men and women can slip through the cracks. The spine-tingling massed chorale that ends an already elegiac masterpiece honours every one of them.
There are, quite simply, too many subjects, too many times, too many places and too many stories for The Missing (at a mere 90 minutes long) to become a truly coherent piece of theatre.
In the end, by making us think about those who have gone, the evening becomes its own tribute to them, a profound act of mourning and memory.
This intensely personal perspective reminds us that we each respond to and make sense of tragedy as individuals, for the world is full of disappearing things and mortality is as dependent on remembering the missing as actually finding them.
At best a mood piece, and a melancholy, evanescent one at that, summed up by the show’s big technical statement.
Whether viewing just one part of the package, or looking at the topic through the multiple artforms on display, The Missing makes an emotional impact across the board.
The Missing emerges as a moving and memorably open-ended piece of theatre, which both pays full respect to the human suffering of those who still mourn the disappeared, and raises some vital questions about the searing gaps in the fabric of our not-so-big society.
The outstanding feature of the production – in every sense – is Neil Warmington's set: a giant moving "screen" across which images "sketched" in light alternate with Ian William Galloway's videos, and stay etched in the memory.
The Missing darkly realises our fears while tinting them with a burning desire for community.
Scots TV star Joe McFadden: Stage play takes a look behind the trails of murder
Andrew O'Hagan brings The Missing from the page to the stage
'The Missing was always waiting to be a play'
The Missing: The only way to stage a house of horrors
Tramway, Glasgow from Thursday September 15, 2011, until Saturday October 1, 2011. More info: www.tramway.org