Inside a pair of evil minds

In 1966, Hannah Arendt coined the phrase 'the banality of evil' in a book about the Nazi death camps. She argued that people who carry out unspeakable acts are not necessarily psychopaths but ordinary people who do not feel compelled to question their behaviour. Arendt was talking about specific circumstances whereby the execution of others was carried out by highly efficient state machinery in which the public took a willing part.

The isolated case of Maggy Strobbe and Luc De Winne is almost an inversion of the circumstances. In 1999, they checked into a hotel in their home town of Aalst in Belgium and smothered their three-month-old daughter. A few days later, they stabbed to death their seven-year-old son. Yet it's hard not to think of Arendt's concept: during the subsequent trial, psychiatry reports failed to find any trace of sociopathic tendencies in either parent. Instead, they concluded that both were completely 'normal'.

Where psychiatry offers unsatisfactory answers, so theatre can perhaps shed more light; at least that's partly the aim of this verbatim play based on court transcripts from the original trial. Here renamed Cathy and Michael Delaney, the couple (Kate Dickie and David McKay) sit on two chairs in front of an unseen judge who interrogates them on their childhoods (both were wretched), their relationship (abusive), the state of their home (filthy and unlit) and why they murdered their children (neither really knows). What emerges is horrific not just because of what happened but the context in which it occurred. It's not just that Cathy or Michael display no remorse but that both appear frighteningly dislocated from fundamental notions about morals, responsibility, love, behaviour - the list is alarmingly endless.

Duncan McLean's script, faithfully based on Pol Heyvaert's original Flemish version, offers every opportunity to feel a measure of pity for the Delaneys but also raises several disturbing questions about truth itself: how reliable is the Delaneys' testimony and, by implication, how reliable is this play? Directed with careful understatement by Heyvaert, this unsentimental, beautifully acted National Theatre Of Scotland production challenges everything we thought we knew about what it means to be human.

Until Apr 28, Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street W1, Mon to Sat 7.30pm, Sat mat 4pm, £7.50 to £15. Tel: 0870 429 6883. www.sohotheatre.com Tube: Tottenham Court Road/Piccadilly Circus

Aalst
Soho Theatre
Dean Street, W1D 3NE