Character Analysis
Phil
Phil is the most complex and enigmatic character in DNA. For much of the play he is silent, eating food while Leah talks at him in the field. He rarely speaks, and when he does, his words carry enormous weight. Phil’s power comes not from aggression but from detachment — he appears unbothered by the moral chaos surrounding him, which makes the group trust his judgement absolutely.
Phil’s trajectory is one of moral escalation. In Act 1, he devises a cover-up; by Act 3, he is potentially ordering murder. Yet Kelly never shows Phil experiencing guilt, doubt, or satisfaction. His emotional blankness is what makes him so unsettling. By Act 4, Phil sits in the field and is not even eating any more. He has not been punished by the law, but he appears emotionally destroyed — or perhaps he was always this hollow.
Phil leads through calm detachment, strategic thinking, and silence. He never shouts, threatens, or shows emotion. His power lies in appearing unaffected — the group follows him because he seems certain when they are panicking. Kelly leaves Phil’s inner life deliberately opaque, making him both fascinating and deeply disturbing.
Leah
Leah is the play’s foil to Phil. Where Phil is silent, Leah is verbal. Where Phil acts decisively, Leah agonises. Her long monologues in the field — about bonobos, happiness, and the nature of existence — reveal a character who thinks deeply about morality but lacks the courage to act on her convictions.
Leah knows the cover-up is wrong. She tries to engage Phil in moral conversation, desperate for him to acknowledge her and the ethical crisis they face. But Phil never responds. Leah’s tragedy is that she has the moral awareness to recognise what is happening but not the strength to stop it. She is trapped between her conscience and her desire to be close to Phil. By Act 4, she has disappeared — the one voice of moral questioning has been silenced.
Leah’s monologues are addressed to Phil, who never responds. This one-sided relationship mirrors the play’s broader dynamic: moral conscience speaks, but power does not listen. Leah tries increasingly desperate tactics to get Phil’s attention — she mentions killing her pet, threatens to harm herself, and talks about death. None of it works. Phil’s silence reduces her to irrelevance. Kelly suggests that in a group dominated by a strong, amoral leader, moral objections simply go unheard.
John Tate
John Tate is the group’s leader at the start of the play, but his authority is built on bluster. He bans the word “dead,” threatens to “bite their face” if anyone says it, and keeps repeating that he is “trying to keep everyone together.” But his panic is visible. When Phil offers a plan, John Tate is instantly sidelined. He offers no resistance because, deep down, he knows he has nothing useful to contribute.
John Tate drops out of the group after Act 1, and by Act 4 he has “found God” and joined the Jesus Army. This could be read as genuine spiritual conversion or, more cynically, as another form of avoidance — replacing one authority figure (himself) with another (God) to escape the burden of personal responsibility.
Cathy
Cathy is the play’s most disturbing character. She shows no guilt, no hesitation, and no empathy. She is energised by the crisis, volunteers for the most violent tasks, and takes visible pleasure in the group’s darker actions. While others deteriorate, Cathy flourishes — she is on television in Act 3 and is running the group by Act 4.
Kelly uses Cathy to explore the idea that group pressure does not just force people into bad behaviour — it can also liberate pre-existing cruelty. Cathy does not become cruel because of the group; the group gives her permission to be who she already is. Her success at the end is Kelly’s most bitter observation: society rewards confidence and assertiveness, even when those qualities are rooted in a complete absence of moral feeling.
Richard
Richard is a minor character who becomes significant in Act 4. He replaces Leah in the field, sitting next to Phil and trying to talk to him. But Richard is not a moral questioner like Leah — he is curious and chatty, reporting news about the group without apparent distress. His presence highlights Leah’s absence: the play’s conscience has been replaced by something lighter and less troubled.
Adam
Adam is the victim. He appears in one scene only, in Act 3, where he describes in broken sentences how he fell, woke in the dark, and made a home in a hedge. For the rest of the play he is the object around which the group’s moral crisis revolves. Kelly’s decision to keep Adam off stage until so late reinforces the play’s central horror: the group has dehumanised him. He is a problem to be managed, not a person to be helped.
Adam appears in one scene only, in Act 3. Kelly keeps him off stage until then to show how the group has dehumanised him — he is treated as a problem to be managed rather than a person with feelings and rights. When he finally speaks, his broken account makes his suffering impossible to ignore.
Mark, Jan, and Danny
Mark and Jan function as a chorus. Their short street scenes at the beginning of each act drip-feed information to the audience. They speak in fragmented, overlapping sentences, finishing each other’s thoughts. Their function is structural: they move the plot forward and build suspense.
Danny, Brian, and Lou are secondary group members who show varying degrees of discomfort with the situation but ultimately comply with Phil’s instructions. Brian is the clearest example of the cost: he cries throughout, is forced to lie to the police, and by Act 4 he is on stronger and stronger medication and may be sectioned. Danny’s plan to be a dentist ends in work experience he hates. Kelly uses these characters to show the psychological cost of complicity — even those who did not directly commit violence are damaged by their participation in the cover-up.