I never cease to be amazed at how plays are defined by their context. In Ashland, Oregon, last spring, David Edgar's two linked plays about a fictional gubernatorial election felt like an extension of their audience's obsessions. Seen in Birmingham en route to the Barbican, the same works inevitably seem more like a day's course in American politics. Yet they retain their epic bravura and, in dealing with spin and spontaneous protest, raise subjects of passionate common concern.
Seeing them again, I am also struck by how closely linked they are, in that both show the possibility of individual integrity even in a poisoned political system. Daughters of the Revolution is less surprising in that it deals, like many of Edgar's British plays, with betrayal on the left: in this case, the transformation of radical 60s baby-boomers into Democrat conformists. But Mothers Against is a real eye-opener in that it suggests that young Republicans, even in the Barry Goldwater era, were sustained by a vision of individual liberty long since forfeited.
Of the two plays, I prefer Mothers Against because it deals vividly with the political processs. It takes place during a country-house weekend where the Republican candidate, Sheldon Vine, is being put through the boot-camp trial of a mock TV debate. The aim of the spin-doctors is to try and shift the dangerously liberal Vine's attitude on two particular issues: the gunning-down of an eco-protester by a Latino security-guard and a putative oath of allegiance which requires all voters to swear loyalty to democratic values.
Edgar's strength lies in his understanding of the mechanics of American politics: the way, for instance, that telephone fundraising is gradually replacing grassroots contact. But I was reminded of David Hare's The Absence of War in that Edgar shows how politicians are under constant pressure from pollsters and policy wonks to deny their individuality. The second-act TV debate, in which Bill Geisslinger as the harassed candidate is forced to triple-guess the responses of Susannah Schulman as his feisty opponent, is gripping in its particularity.
Edgar has also radically improved the matching Democrat play, Daughters of the Revolution: a political thriller in which a professorial ex-activist seeks to discover the identity of the informer who betrayed his revolutionary cell. Much more is now at stake in that the hero, instead of being simply a low-level dean, has been appointed to lead a state inquiry. And Edgar has beefed up the point that the worst betrayal is self-betrayal. As the hero says, "You don't sell out to the FBI, you become the FBI."
I still find the play somewhat diffuse: Edgar takes on board the Black Panthers, leftwing apostates and the seductions of power and wealth. But Terry Layman, superbly troubled as the hero, has one particular speech about the daily compromises involved in re-election that will strike a resonant chord in Blair's Britain. Edgar also suggests that the spirit of 60s activism reassuringly survives in the form of ecological protest.
Jointly presented by Berkeley Repertory and the Oregon Shakespeare festival, the two plays are vigorously directed by Tony Taccone and buoyantly acted by a large cast in which Derrick Lee Weeden is outstanding as both a reformed Panther and his Republican twin. But the real pleasure lies in seeing theatre used as a large-scale mirror of society and in being reminded of drama's capacity to embody, as well as analyse, the political process.
· At the Barbican, London from Saturday until April 4. Box office: 0845 120 7550.
