Phrynichus may have got there first with The Capture of Miletus in 494 BC, but modern verbatim theatre was revived and codified by the Department of Agitation and Propaganda during the early years of the Soviet Union, making an art form that would survive most of the century, yielding such works as Peter Weiss’s The Investigation.
In the 21st century, documentary theatre has been used to explore gay-marriage legislation (Dustin Lance Black’s 8), 9/11 (The Guys, Come From Away) and the wrongful convictions of former death row convicts (The Exonerated).
The same techniques have found their way into cinema, notably in Sonia Kennebeck’s identity-protected Enemies of the State and in Clio Barnard’s The Arbor, an arresting depiction of the Bradford estate where former teen playwright Andrea Dunbar lived and died.
Jono McLeod’s documentary portrait of the Brandon Lee scandal is rather more playful with the technique. Those unfamiliar with the strange, elaborate hoax that brought international news crews to a secondary school outside Glasgow in 1995 would do well to avoid any pertinent details before seeing My Old School.
Lee, who is not to be confused with the late star of The Crow, agreed to be profiled, but declined to appear on camera, leaving it to actor Alan Cumming to lip-sync what coalesces into a remarkable confession. In 1993, Lee arrived at the prestigious Bearsden Academy from Canada, where he was raised by his opera singer mother before she was tragically killed in a car crash. Sitting back at their old, cramped desks, Lee’s former classmates variously recall a good student who distributed mixtapes featuring Hüsker Dü, who was cast as Cable in the school production of South Pacific, and who — most impressively — had a driving licence.
Director McLeod — another of Lee’s fellow students — has fun with contradictory accounts, tall tales and faulty memories in a film that pulls the rug just as effectively as its subject and inscrutable star do.
Lee’s South Pacific costar recalls a reluctant kiss that looks rather more convincing when someone unearths a videotape of the performance. Stories concerning a fateful holiday — typically beginning with “I heard ...” are as fantastic as they sound. Animated segments cleverly and visually ape MTV’s contemporaneous Daria, and add another lively dimension to this pleasingly calibrated ruse.
