This may not be the most subtle form of political theatre. But Embedded, written and directed by Tim Robbins and performed by The Actors' Gang from Los Angeles, is a lively addition to the body of protest drama about the Iraq war: closer in spirit to The Madness of George Dubya than to the Tricycle's sober verbatim theatre.
There are three strands to Robbins's satirical collage. The most potent concerns the US military's attempt to control information from the embedded mainstream media. Then there are the political debates amongst the masked neo-cons in Bush's war cabinet.
And, finally, there is the testimony of soldiers who express bewildered dismay and even, as in the famous case of the captive female rescued from an Iraqi hospital, find their experience grotesquely fictionalised.
Robbins's weakness is that, in 85 minutes, he takes on too much and embraces too many diverse styles: everything from the techniques of Piscator's 1920s political revues to the homely realism of soldiers' letters. He sometimes takes too much on trust.
The ideologically pure neo-cons prostrate themselves before the iconic figure of the German refugee philosopher, Leo Strauss. But I learned more about Strauss, who endorsed Plato's "noble lies", from the New York Review of Books than from the show.
But to those who argue the show is leftwing propaganda, I would suggest that is nothing compared to the propaganda of the American military machine.
Robbins is at his best in showing the journalists being drilled by a showbiz-addicted sergeant and in reminding us of the limitations placed on truth: on-the-spot reporters have to seek "script approval" back home, access to casualties is denied, events like the toppling of Saddam's statue are choreographed. His key point is that American viewers and readers have been fed a sanitised vision of the war.
It also seems pointless to insist that all political theatre must be identical: there is room for wild satire as well as drama-doc.
And when Robbins shows the cartoonish neo-cons offering contradictory justifications for war and gleefully asking "Where do we go next?" he is offering justified elaborations of known truths.
Back home his buoyant show was critically panned and publicly popular; and the reason, I suspect, is that it offers a disenchanted view that doesn't get much airing in the predominantly pliant media.
· Until October 23. Box office: 020-8237 1111.
