2,000 Feet Away
Bush
Relocated
Royal Court
The Chalk Garden
Donmar
America is nuts about paedophiles. That’s the take-home message of Anthony Weigh’s new play 2,000 Feet Away, which stars Joseph Fiennes. The title refers to a provision of Megan’s law which sets out the minimum permissible distance between the home of a paedophile and any place where children are likely to gather. The law has unintended consequences. A town can completely rid itself of sex offenders if enough inhabitants register their houses as children’s nurseries. The sex offenders are evicted and, deprived of any loyalty to a world they can never rejoin, they congregate in shoddy hotels where they help each other develop ruses to approach children while evading detection. Naturally a building full of nonces becomes a rather tempting target for vigilantes who want to lob petrol bombs. This is the grisly inferno the play examines.
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