DNA: Plot Summary (AQA GCSE English Literature)

Plot summary

In your English Literature exam, you won’t need to retell the story of the play DNA, but it will help you to know the plot well. For a thorough exam response, you will need to refer to scenes and events across the whole play so that you can track the play’s dramatic structure, its central themes and its character development. Knowing the plot well will also help you to consider the audience’s response at key points in the play. 

Overview

Dennis Kelly’s DNA opens on a street. It is unclear exactly where this is, which means the setting represents society in general (and the stage directions reveal it is probably England). In this dark scene, two teenagers (Mark and Jan) comically discuss the death of a boy they know. Without revealing any more about this, the scene changes to a field with a couple having a picnic. Leah wants to debate life with Phil, but he is concentrating on spreading jam on a waffle, which introduces Phil as uninterested and self-absorbed. 

The scene shifts again, now to a wood, where a group of teenagers, including the leader of the group, John Tate, are engaged in a conflict; they argue and threaten each other as they debate the death of the boy, Adam. While some are scared and accept that Adam’s death will lead to trouble, others attempt to deny events and threaten anyone who sticks to the truth. 

Playwright Dennis Kelly portrays the reality of bullying and peer pressure as Jan and Mark relate the details of Adam’s torture off-handedly, as if it was a joke. The brutality of their actions arguably echoes the hyper-violence of Shakespeare’s plays (Delijani, 2021). This first act portrays each character’s reaction to the crisis, highlighting how easily fear and a threat to personal security leads individuals to unite and form a single, false narrative. The act ends on the field again, where an anxious Leah attempts to shock Phil out of his cynical nihilism. 

In the rising action of the play, Kelly depicts how the young people’s confusion and doubt quickly allow Phil to step in and take charge as gang leader. Phil’s plan is for the group to lie to the police and create DNA evidence to frame an innocent man. 

Kelly portrays the divisions that appear in the group as a result of poor leadership. Characters with empathy and a sense of justice come into conflict with others who wish to deny reality and accountability. Leah functions as a voice of conscience who is ignored and isolated, while Brian becomes another victim of the gang’s cruel bullying. 

Kelly develops ideas about morality and redemption when Adam appears in the wood, alive but bewildered. This scene explicitly presents the difference between right and wrong, and good and evil. The group is offered a chance to correct their sins against Adam, an opportunity Leah is keen to take. But Phil convinces the others to stay silent, and suggests that as Adam is perceived to be dead already, there is no harm in continuing this illusion. What’s worse, he decides that Adam’s return poses a threat, and demonstrates to Cathy how to kill Adam by tightening a plastic bag around the disturbed and weakened Brian. This scene mirrors the description of Adam’s abuse. His “giggling” reminds audiences that Mark believed Adam complicit in his own torture as he was laughing. This climactic scene marks the turning point of the play. On the field, it is Phil who tries to engage a silent and detached Leah. 

At the end of the play, the falling action reveals the consequences of their actions. Richard tells Phil that life has continued, and that their secrets remain undetected by larger society or the authorities. Kelly suggests that this perpetuates the criminality of those without compassion. 

Cathy, who now “likes violence”, leads a gang with Lou, and Mark and Jan take up petty crime. On the other hand, Brian’s mental state has deteriorated, and John, perhaps overwhelmed with guilt, seeks solace in religion. Only Leah is able to escape, confirming her earlier beliefs that change is possible, and that not everyone is “doomed to behave like people before us”. 

The resolution conveys the futility of repeated cycles. Phil remains on the field, in his own world. But this scene dramatically conveys ideas about guilt and justice, as Kelly implies that Phil acknowledges his mistakes and faces a bleak future without Leah. 

Act-by-act plot summary

Act 1

• Scene 1 opens the play on a street where two friends, Mark and Jan, discuss a boy’s death

• Scene 2 shifts to a field, where Leah is talking to a silent Phil, who is focused on eating a waffle:

  • Leah asks Phil questions about life and humanity 

• Scene 3 opens in a wood where a group has gathered:

  • Richard tells Cathy, Brian and Lou that a boy from school, Adam, is dead

  • Some of the teenagers express their concern, for example, Danny, who thinks his future in dentistry is under threat, and Lou, who believes they are “screwed”

  • John Tate believes they are exaggerating events and bans them from saying the word “dead”, violently threatening anyone who opposes him

  • Mark and Jan tell the group that Adam was involved in a prank that went wrong

  • Their explanation suggests it was all a “laugh”, despite the abuse they detail as they describe how Adam was burnt, stoned and forced into dangerous acts

  • The group seems confused as to their best course of action

  • Phil takes charge and instructs them to plan a cover-up by framing someone 

  • Leah expresses her concerns about this plan

• Scene 4 opens on a field where Leah tries to engage Phil in conversation:

  • She comments on humanity’s capacity for cruelty, referring to the differences in DNA between chimps, humans and bonobos (another type of ape)

Act 2

• Kelly opens Act 2 in the street again, where Jan and Mark discuss the fact that Brian refuses to tell a lie to the police

• Act 2 Scene 2 is back in the field, where Leah questions the meaning of life:

  • Her anxiety is clear in this scene as she appears detached and confused

  • She tries to get Phil’s attention by showing him a dead rodent in her lunchbox, and casually says she killed it but is unsure why

  • She discusses how everyone seems happy at school, despite Adam’s death

• Act 2 Scene 3 returns to the wood where Danny tells everyone that a postman has been arrested as a result of their false report:

  • Cathy proudly tells them she provided evidence against a real postman

  • Lou, Leah and Danny challenge this and try to explain the injustice in this plan

  • Brian opposes Phil’s instructions to return to the police station to confirm it, but is threatened by Phil who says he will be thrown off the “grille” to “rot” with Adam

• Back in the field, Act 2 Scene 4 opens with Leah again trying to attract Phil’s attention with a dramatic story of deja vu, but he is too busy eating

Act 3

• In Act 3 Scene 1, Jan and Mark, on the street, discuss the fact that Cathy has “found someone” in the woods

• In Act 3 Scene 2, Leah is on the field with a suitcase, threatening to leave:

  • She tells Phil about Adam’s memorial and that everyone is acting better than they ever did as a result of the accident 

• In the wood, the climactic Act 3 Scene 3 reveals that Adam is alive and has been living in a bush:

  • He is scared of the group, although he appears mysteriously calm as well

  • Phil instructs the group to stay silent about this discovery, and goes on to speak conspiratorially to Cathy

  • Phil demonstrates, on the extremely disturbed Brian, how Adam should be killed (by tightening a plastic bag around Brian’s head)

  • A distraught Leah challenges Phil’s reassurances that Adam is “happy” and begs him to see clearly and not to kill him

• In the field in Act 3 Scene 4, Leah, uncharacteristically, remains silent:

  • Phil, uncharacteristically, offers her a sweet and puts his arm around her 

  • When she angrily leaves, he calls after her but receives no reply 

Act 4

• Act 4 Scene 1, again on the street, shows Jan and Mark discussing Leah’s absence

• In Act 4 Scene 2, on the field, Richard (instead of Leah) is trying to engage Phil:

  • He tells him that Cathy has become the leader of the gang and that Lou is her friend

  • He explains that Mark and Jan are shoplifting, that Brian is very ill, and that John has found religion

  • Phil, not eating anything for the first time in the play, is silent and unreachable

Sources

Kelly, D. (2021). DNA. Bloomsbury Publishing (edited by Clare Delijani).