‘Sobering’ school shooting play at Edinburgh Fringe gets seal of approval from Dunblane families during 30th anniversary year

‘The Second Best School Shooting’ tells the story of two best friends struggling to process a shooting at their school in the United States, which is then overshadowed by a bigger school shooting on the same day.

The dark comedy play is playing at the Pleasance Baby Grand until August 30, with no shows on August 12, 19 or 26.

Mick North and Rachael Irvine, from the Gun Control Network, attended the show’s preview performance and gave their seal of approval for the unconventional take on the dark subject matter.

Mick, whose five-year-old daughter Sophie died in the Dunblane shooting 30 years ago, said: “It was incredible, so well acted and written.

“I’ve got some some experience of how American teenagers think about lockdown drill and gun because I’ve marked essays for high school competitions and I found this frustration of not being able to get your head around the situation, and that comes over so well in the production.”

Rachael, whose brother Ross also died in the Dunblane shooting at the age of five, added: “There's a lot going on there, not just the comedy angle, but I think it really speaks to the fact that around even an issue like gun violence. The human experience is just very nuanced in how people respond to that.

“There's a lot of colour as people process and work their way through. And everyone's very different.”

Rachael, 29, added: “For local audiences, it’s just a very sobering reminder of the reality of what it's like to live with gun violence as a threat, and why we're lucky to not have that here, and the laws that many people have fought for and have made us safer.

“It's a reminder of just how perverse it is, I guess that's why the comedic element works so well.

“It's a way of making sense of something that is really dark, and it's so perverse that it's normal to young people. I think it will resonate with a lot of different audiences.”

Mick, 78, also recognised the significance of The Second Best School Shooting being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe on the 30th anniversary year of the Dunblane shooting and in the current political climate.

He said: “It's been an important time for us because there are a number of us who, we never wanted everybody to have to remember it all the time, but we don't want people to forget about why we do have rather different gun laws here than from the States. So it was an important time to remind people how that happened, that it didn't just come out of the blue, it came about as a result of tragedy.

Referencing Restore Britain’s leader Rupert Lowe claiming on a US podcast last month that the Dunblane massacre was just “one murder”, Mick added: “I wouldn't want to sort of big up the threat of the far right, but it is true we have political parties who are being elected now or their predecessor parties have had it as part of their manifesto to reverse what happened after Dunblane.

“There are warning signs out there, and people who might wish to vote for these parties for other reasons should bear in mind what they're voting for.

“I think that was one of my motivations for pushing for things to happen at the 30th anniversary, to remind people why this had happened, why we do have to remain vigilant.”

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The Second Best School Shooting writer Alice Stanley Jr based the story on her experience as a public school teacher in the States.

Alice said: “I wrote it four years ago and it's been almost produced countless times and always at the last minute, some funding would drop out because they were afraid of political repercussions, someone would get spooked.

“Finally, one producer named Jessica Greene Harrison said that he had to take it away from America.”

She added: “The Gun Control Network is just such an amazing beacon for what is possible. In America, the conversation is like, well, there's nothing you can do.

“But there is. Other people have done it and they are the proof.”