The RSC was founded on the principle that the classics should interact with contemporary drama; Roy Williams in this ambitious, if overloaded, 90-minute new play takes this literally. He uses the plot of Much Ado About Nothing as a springboard to examine the naive, adolescent, even racist values that many of our young soldiers have exported to Iraq.
In the course of three short acts Williams gradually moves the argument outwards. He starts by showing Jamie and Ben, on the eve of being dispatched to Iraq, on a boozy bender full of amorous misunderstandings which echo Shakespeare's Sicilian comedy. He then cuts to a Basra alleyway, where Ben, having opened fire on a group of unarmed kids, is fatally holed up with a fellow squaddie and dying sergeant. Finally Williams returns to market-town England - where Jamie's girl, originally known as Hannah the Slapper, has matured into political awareness, and is prepared to stand by her man as he faces trial for Iraqi torture.
Williams's point is not exactly new: the argument that the soldiers fighting an ugly, unwanted war may spring from a deprived underclass was frequently heard about the Americans in Vietnam. But Williams is the first dramatist to apply this directly to Iraq; and he gives us abundant evidence in the opening scenes that Jamie, Ben, and their like are basically feckless, foul-mouthed, scared kids being sent to a war of which they know virtually nothing.
Through the moral awakening of Hannah, Williams also makes it clear that his real target, like Edward Bond in Saved, is a society that tragically fails too many of its young people. Williams crams in an excess of sub-themes: notably, the guilty sexual desires of Hannah's burger-selling stepfather. But this is a play of passion and political anger that, without exculpating the young, suggests they are often victims of cultural deprivation.
Maria Aberg's visceral promenade production is also vigorously acted by a strong cast. Claire-Louise Cordwell as the growingly articulate Hannah, Pippa Nixon as the tart-tongued Trish, and Ashley Rolfe and Jamie Davis as the hapless soldiers, notably shine. It makes for a tough, pugnacious evening which shows Williams, who has impressively charted the intricacies of Anglo-Saxon racism, widening his horizons to tackle the poisoned state of society.
· Until Saturday. Box office: 0870 609 1110.
