What happens when you discover that the people you love have different political views from yours? That your fellow travellers are no longer journeying along the same road but have veered off in another direction?
In the latest play from Australian Van Badham, Maggie Tanner is an old leftie and high-profile academic whose trenchant view that you need to maintain a dialogue with the disaffected has put her at odds with a government intent on cracking down heavily on terrorism. But when she and her daughter are caught up in a bombing, the certainties of Maggie's world crumble - particularly as her husband, a retired trades union activist, starts supporting the government clampdowns, arguing: "There is no freedom when I can't believe that my wife and children will make it home."
The family tension is raised when Maggie's stepson returns from the US after many years, and her daughter Rebekah takes a shine to him.
Badham doesn't always successfully entwine the more soap opera-ish strands of the story with the main debate, and, although the writing is always intelligent, it sometimes has the clunkiness that so often goes hand in hand with stage naturalism. It actually cries out for a TV treatment. But it is compulsively watchable, decently acted and staged, and confirms Badham as one to look out for.
· Until August 24. Box office: 0870 701 5105.
