Acts 1-2: The Crime & the Cover-Up
What Happened to Adam
The audience never sees the original crime. Instead, we piece together what happened through Mark and Jan’s fragmented dialogue in the street scenes. The group had been bullying Adam — making him eat leaves, hitting him, burning him with cigarettes and making him steal vodka. What started as cruel games escalated. They dared him to cross a grille over a shaft in the woods, then threw stones at him. One stone hit him and he fell. They looked down into the darkness and assumed he was dead.
Kelly’s choice to reveal the crime through retrospective narration is crucial. Mark and Jan interrupt each other, contradict each other, and stumble over details. “We were having a laugh,” they insist, as though the word “laugh” can contain what they did. Their fragmented speech mirrors the group’s inability to process the horror — they cannot tell the story straight because they cannot face what it means.
The bullying of Adam escalated: they made him eat leaves, hit him, burned him with cigarettes and made him steal vodka. They then dared him to cross a grille and threw stones at him until he fell. His fall — and the group’s assumption of his death — triggers the entire plot. We learn this only through Mark and Jan’s broken retelling, never through direct action.
Act 1: Panic and Power Vacuum
Act 1 opens in three locations that recur throughout the play: a street (Mark and Jan), a field (Leah and Phil), and a wood (the group). In the street, Mark and Jan establish the crisis. In the field, Leah talks to Phil, who eats an ice cream and says nothing. The stage direction “Phil is eating an ice cream” is one of the play’s most striking images — while everyone else panics, Phil consumes, unmoved. His silence is not confusion; it is the calm of someone who is already thinking.
In the wood, John Tate tries to take charge. He is the group’s nominal leader, but his authority is disintegrating. He bans the word “dead”: “Alright. New rule; that word is banned.” This attempt to control reality through language is both comic and desperate. By forbidding the word, John Tate reveals that he cannot cope with the thing it describes. His leadership is based on denial, and denial cannot hold a group together.
In the field, Leah delivers one of the play’s most important speeches. She talks about bonobos — a species of ape that shares 99.6% of its DNA with humans. Unlike chimpanzees, which are aggressive and hierarchical, bonobos resolve conflict through cooperation and affection. Leah’s point is philosophical: if our DNA is almost identical to a peaceful species, why do humans choose violence?
“We share 99.6% of our DNA with them,” Leah says. “Chimps. Not bonobos. We share more of our DNA with bonobos. But we choose chimps.” This speech is the thematic heart of the play. It connects the title (DNA) to the central question: are humans naturally violent, or do we choose to be? The bonobos represent the road not taken — the peaceful alternative that the group rejects. Phil, characteristically, says nothing in response. His silence forces Leah to talk more, exposing her desperation: “You need me, Phil. Everyone needs someone.”
Phil’s Plan: The Cover-Up
When Phil finally speaks, he takes control instantly. His plan is chillingly methodical. He invents a kidnapper. The group tells the police about a man in the woods who exposed himself, and then makes that man real: they take Adam’s jumper and get an innocent stranger to handle it, so that the stranger’s DNA is on it. The police will find the jumper and arrest him for Adam’s supposed murder.
The plan works. Cathy finds a postman who matches the description and gets him to handle the jumper. He is arrested, and Brian then picks him out for the police. The group has not only covered up their own crime — they have framed an innocent person. Phil shows no remorse. He delivers instructions in short, flat sentences, with no feeling and no explanation. The simplicity of his language contrasts sharply with the moral enormity of what he is asking. He breaks complex criminality into manageable steps, making it easier for the group to comply without confronting the full weight of what they are doing.
Phil’s cover-up plan frames an innocent man: the group gets a stranger to handle Adam’s jumper, so the police find the stranger’s DNA on it. He delivers instructions in short, flat sentences that break criminality into manageable steps, making it psychologically easier for the group to obey without confronting the moral horror of their actions.
Act 2: The Plan in Action
In Act 2, the cover-up is working. The postman has been arrested. The group should feel relief, but instead the pressure intensifies. Brian, a minor character, “can’t stop crying.” Cathy is enjoying the drama — she tells the group that a TV reporter has interviewed her about the “missing boy,” and she loved the attention. This is the first sign of Cathy’s dangerous appetite for power and visibility.
Leah, meanwhile, becomes increasingly desperate. In the field, she tries everything to get Phil to respond — talking about chimps and bonobos, threatening to set fire to herself, even attempting it. Phil watches and continues eating. “I’m not saying anything,” he states at one point, as though silence itself is a position. Leah’s monologues become longer and more frantic as the play progresses, revealing that her need for Phil’s acknowledgment mirrors the group’s need for his leadership. Both are forms of dependency.
Each act cycles through three locations: the street (Mark and Jan), the field (Leah and Phil), and the wood (the group). The street scenes function as a chorus, updating the audience on developments. The field scenes explore the personal cost of the crime through Leah and Phil’s dysfunctional relationship. The wood scenes show the group’s collective actions and power dynamics.
By Act 2, the street scenes grow shorter and more tense, the field scenes grow more desperate (Leah’s monologues lengthen), and the wood scenes grow darker as the cover-up deepens. Kelly uses the recurring structure to show escalation: the same locations, but the moral atmosphere gets worse each time we return.
Acts 1 and 2 establish the pattern that defines the play: a crisis occurs, the group turns to Phil, Phil gives orders, the group obeys, and the moral consequences are ignored. Kelly shows that the cover-up is not a one-off decision but a rolling process of deeper and deeper complicity. Each step makes the next one easier to justify and harder to reverse.