BU21
TRAFALGAR STUDIOS, LONDON

In Thornton Wilder’s great novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, a friar investigates the lives of five people who died when a bridge collapsed in Peru, seeking meaning as to why the quintet perished.

BU21, Stuart Slade’s disturbing and courageous play, is a sort of flip side to Wilder, consisting of interlocking monologues from six members of a survivors’ support group set up after a terrorist missile has brought down a plane on west London.

The sextet of the affected who come weekly to seek healing over tea and biscuits are Alex, a banker whose girlfriend was killed when wreckage hit the house in which she was committing infidelity with his best friend;