HARD on the heels of the NT show Grenfell: In The Words Of The Survivors comes another astonishing epic of verbatim theatre, As Far As Impossible (★★★★★), Tiago Rodrigues’s rendition of interviews with humanitarian aid workers from the Red Cross and Medecins Sans Frontiers.

Like in Grenfell, actors play multiple interviewees and the result is so urgent and compelling that it is tempting to see this very contemporary convention as heralding a new genre in political theatre and a next step after Brecht.

This theatre has learned from the East German master. The “distance” of actor from role is immediately established, allowing a man to play a woman or, controversially, a white woman to play a black woman. The performance is simply enactment; the words themselves are evidence.