Tim Robbins & Susan Sarandon star in "The Guys", a play based on the real life experiences of journalist Anne Nelson, who helped a New York fire chief compose eulogies for men who died when the Twin Towers collapsed.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

Watch the whole programme - 16 August 2002

KIRSTY WARK:
Did you look on it as a moving experience?

IAN RANKIN:
That was what I was going to say last, that I didn't find it particularly moving. It was very good and very involving, and they did it very well. I got a lot out of it, but there wasn't a lump in the throat and a tear coming to the eye at the end.

I felt that, in something President Bush himself might say, it was a proportionate response to the events of that day.

In Edinburgh, we have a whole range of things. We have the po-faced and reverential where you feel like you are in church. We also have satire, which has been taken quite badly on the other side of the Pond.

It wasn't moving but it was good, and it made you think about these firemen and the way America had built them up to be heroes because at that moment the media and the public needed heroes. This play actually says, "Yes, but there are people behind that kind of image".

KIRSTY WARK:
Anne Nelson wrote this quickly after the disaster, from a simple perspective of their lives, these fire-fighters' lives. Tim Robbins says he knows the perspective will shift and there will be more critical, more analytical pieces. Did you miss analysis in this?

BONNIE GREER:
Yes. This is almost a year after it's happened, and that's what we need right now. I can see that this was important in December when it opened, because I was there seven weeks after it happened.

If I had seen this piece then, I would have felt a lot more different than I did the other night when I saw it. If you think to yourself and ask yourself the question, what is the mindset of America in relation to Iraq, how could they contemplate hitting Iraq, go see this play, because it will tell you.

It shows really what the majority of my fellow country people are about really, is that we tend to be very insular people, a people who don't see the world outside of the United States.

At the end of this piece, the most shocking bit was when the playwright says, "I really wish it didn't happen. I really wished everybody went home at the end."

It leaves the rest of the world in a huge, huge void. I have a lot of respect for Sarandon and Robbins. They are great artists and activists, but this kind of piece is the sort of thing that I just was absolutely appalled by on many levels.

KIRSTY WARK:
Why appalled?

BONNIE GREER:
Because I think it did not really take into account the rest of the world. It's a very simplistic way of talking about the story.

Yes, there were these seven firemen. Their death was very important. But it was a whole panorama that this involves. How can we even begin to deal with September 11th at this point? It's too close.

SIMON ARMITAGE:
As a play, it had those ambitions. It felt to me more like a community play. I felt I was almost watching a piece of historical drama that had more relevance perhaps in December than it has now.

It was modest and low-key. To begin with, it had the hallmarks of an ugly little event, two Hollywood big-shots airlifting themselves in for a guaranteed audience.

I could feel myself preparing for the nauseating moment when they walked on stage and everybody applauded spontaneously. But I think they did it really well and they proved themselves to be great actors and entertainers. It was funny.

KIRSTY WARK:
In the reading, she writes eulogies for the fire-fighters, and what they seemed to be doing was solving their own crisis of marginality by appearing in the play?

IAN RANKIN:
This is about the artistic community trying to be relevant.

BONNIE GREER:
We can stand and whine about how sad it all was. We can talk about how pathetic it all was and about these guys as if this is the most important thing in the world.

It's very important for Americans to put this whole incident in the whole context of the world itself. It's a very small, parochial piece. It's badly written as well. That was the part that got me. It's very tritely written.

KIRSTY WARK:
Do you agree it's badly written?

SIMON ARMITAGE:
I think, like Ian, I wasn't moved by it. It wasn't the greatest piece of drama but I was entertained by it.

There was a line about people jumping tracks, and that's how we always respond to things, at the local level. I thought in that sense, it was very well done. The point about the artistic community was very well made.

Here were firemen, this great utilitarian, functional role. There was nothing they could do apart from grieve and mourn. The writers, who are usually the impotent people in this situation, actually had a role to play.

KIRSTY WARK:
What about the role to play in the wider festival? There has been everything. There has been stand-up, testimony, all sorts of things. This, in a sense, has been the first concentrated area of September 11th artistic material.

IAN RANKIN:
A lot of other shows are probably cheesed off, shall we say, that these two big Hollywood names come and take every seat, everybody wants to see them.

You were sitting watching 30 feet away, watching these two great iconic stars, and it was difficult to imagine that they weren't. You were saying, "how big Tim Robbins is in real life and Susan Sarandon's hair looks nice." It was hard to imagine the parts they were playing.

BONNIE GREER:
This is becoming the Vagina Monologues of the Hollywood set, so that's the deal.