Any Means Necessary
Kefi Chadwick
They don’t care about the truth or changing anything. They just want to discredit us. Bury us under a load of insinuation and then shut us up by paying us off. I can’t bear to bleed out my pain and it not mean anything.
When Mel meets Dave at a protest, she believes she has met her kindred spirit. Dave soon becomes central to her life and her activist friends. But is he who he appears to be?
An emotionally compelling drama that explores love, betrayal, secrets and lies and exposes the brutality of a police policy that used any means necessary to undermine political protest.
Based on a true story, Any Means Necessary centres on the events surrounding a group of environmental activists and the 2011 court case that charged them with trespass at nearby Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station.
This real-life event set in Nottingham uncovered a national scandal that has led to a full police apology and an admission that their officers’ behaviour was an abuse of the women’s human rights. A major public inquiry begins in January 2016 and is expected to run for 3 years.
This play was published to coincide with the world premiere of the play at Nottingham Playhouse on 5 February 2016.
Product Details
About Kefi Chadwick
Reviews for Any Means Necessary
Sunday Times on "Mathematics of the Heart"
[Achieves] a balance between brittle humour and broody thoughtfulness
The Times on "Mathematics of the Heart"
Brims with vitality and acuity, resulting in a pleasing and pertinent play about the nature of rivalry and relationships
Stage on "Mathematics of the Heart"
The case of police spies forming sexual relationships with political activists has been so well documented . . . that it is fair to ask what a dramatist can add. In the case of Kefi Chadwick, who has written this fascinating play, she brings a vivid picture of the mutual destructiveness of fraudulent affairs, but also an awareness that collective action can lead to public change. [...] The virtue of the play is that it links private and public worlds. Through the story of Mel and Dave, it explores the difficulty of faking a long-term relationship without a genuine sense of entanglement. [...] what is heartening about Chadwick's play is that it reminds you of past wrongs while showing that women have the power to take present action.
Guardian
bold and insightful . . . Chadwick's play remains powerful, political stuff . . . a true-life horror story in which individuals count for nothing and everyone is expendable.
Stage
Kefi Chadwick's text is excellent . . . Anyone hoping for a one-sided evening of left-wing agitprop would have trudged home disappointed. It is altogether more complex and interesting than that. And it manages to end on an . . . optimistic note.
Nottingham Post
Any Means Necessary is a fascinating play that looks at events where the audience are likely to know the ending and the corrupt motivations of the police. Yet we still sit as onlookers breathlessly observing the lies unfolding and they are told with such conviction that our sympathies find it difficult to know who to side with.
Big Issue
Chadwick's play seeks to demonstrate the scale of the betrayal of ordinary women by a corrupt police institution. . . . The dynamics of the protesters ring true, the warmth of their friendships compensating for some occasional artificial speechifying . . . offers an important, emotive call for action by demonstrating the scale of the betrayal perpetuated on activists and exposing the belligerent callousness of the police towards those affected. It painstakingly captures the insidiousness of a lie that sullies everything it touches and destroys the ability to trust. . . . [Any Means Necessary] establishes a platform which, one hopes, will enable many more victims to speak about their experiences and seek justice, and, crucially, prevent this happening again.
Exeunt