THE 56 (Assembly), a stunning verbatim documentary, marks the 30th anniversary of the disastrous fire at Bradford City’s Valley Parade ground that killed 56 and injured hundreds more.

Delivered unemotionally by three young actors it details, minute by minute, the events of that tragic afternoon through the words of survivors, friends and family members, many of whom lost loved ones.

Acts of amazing courage leave an enduring memory and mitigate the pain as the names of the victims are read out.

Cinema (Summerhall) presents a very different take on another mass tragedy. The Rex Cinema in the Iranian oil city of Abadan was burned down in 1978, either by anti-Shah Islamists or by the regime itself in order to terrify a rebellious people. 422 were burned alive behind locked doors.

The stories of a day of happiness turned into a burning hell are described by the cinema cat Shahrazad and what could have been irritatingly whimsical becomes elegiac as director and performer Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh wonders whether she is a cat dreaming she is a human being or a human being dreaming she is a cat.

She laments the loss of her human “family” and awaits the loss of her ninth life. In the desolate darkness of the ruined building, she sees Death sitting in the front row.

I mistakenly expected that Ndebele Funeral (Summerhall, pictured) would be equally melancholic.

Thundi, played by the play’s writer Zoey Martinson, is in the late stages of Aids and she angrily prepares for the end by making her own colourful coffin from materials provided by the government to patch her Soweto shack.

But her ex-university friend Mandisi (Yusuf Miller) breaks through her hopelessness with an infectious gaiety.

They dance and even sing, rejecting the officialdom that treats the people like “shit.” At the climax when, as an act of love¸ Mandisi reluctantly decides to help Thundi out of her present mental state and approaching physical suffering by shooting her, the audience is nevertheless left with a belief in humanity, despite the cruel world we inhabit.

There is certainly not much hope in the portrayal of our education system in SEN (Bedlam Theatre). Holly McKinlay’s play is set in the “intervention” session of a London school dealing with pupils who have special educational needs.

The two teenage detainees, the feral Taylor (Olivia Duffin) and the unnervingly confident, hijab-wearing Aalia (Akila Cristiano), systematically destroy the feeble rookie teacher struggling with his own insecurities.

These kids live in a brutal domestic world where formal education is seen as an irrelevant joke and the play, full of anger and pain, is not one for would-be teachers — even though it’s often hilariously funny.

Bryony Lavery’s factually based Kursk (Royal College of Physicians) from Ut Severis theatre company embodies faith in shared human values even within international conflict.

The claustrophobic confinement of a British submarine spying on the latest Soviet nuclear model captures the tense interplay of personalities under the cover of constant badinage. When the Soviet vessel Kursk suddenly explodes and sinks, entombing its large crew, the Nato sub is forbidden to assist in any rescue attempt as “it is not supposed to be there.”

The British crew agonise over the plight of their fellow submariners and the callous indifference of warring establishments to human suffering.

Denial (Central Hall) from Red Card Theatre demands notice. On the company’s visit to Auschwitz in 2000, it was horrified to meet neonazi parties, mostly from Britain, sneering or celebrating while still denying the existence of the Holocaust.

With a powerful mixture of dramatic presentation of the visit, with verbal and projected photographic commentary, the company has since toured schools, prisons and theatre spaces encouraging discussion, making history real in the process.

Review by Gordon Parsons