After a slew of bad American political plays, Donald Freed's latest shows how these things should be done. Set in Panama City in 1989 during General Noriega's downfall, it draws general lessons from vividly particular instances. Above all, it follows Noam Chomsky in suggesting disturbing parallels between the capture and trial of Noriega and that of Saddam Hussein for crimes originally supported by America.
In Freed's play we see Noriega trapped in Panama's papal nunciature during the American invasion. His only companion is Vatican representative Archbishop Jose Laboa, and the men engage in a cat-and-mouse game of accusation and counter-accusation. The general seeks the cleric's help in gaining sanctuary abroad. When that is denied, Noriega rebuts the charge that he is a living Satan and shows how, having been recruited by the CIA in the 1960s, he was a tool of US foreign policy before becoming its latest victim.
Freed packs in a lot of information: not least about the Panama Canal, over which the US lost control in 1979 and which was the ultimate reason for the invasion. But the virtue of Freed's play is that it exposes US hypocrisy without sanitising Noriega. Although attacked for drug-trafficking, the general argues that his Latin American money-laundering was sanctioned by Washington, that western capitalism has always depended on narcotics and that junk bonds are not idly named. Even the archbishop, who acts as his interrogator, finally concedes: "You and your generation of tin-pot dictators tortured and terrorised for us."
At times I wished the archbishop were more vehemently oppositional. But Freed's play is first-rate and allows its arguments to emerge through the interplay of character. Dee Evans's production, excellently designed by Robin Carter to suggest religious office and military compound, is eloquently acted. Ignatius Anthony's Noriega is both arrogant self-vindicator and political patsy, and Peter Dineen's archbishop conveys the haunted conscience of the heavyweight Vatican inquisitor.
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