This is a play whose time has come again. First, GE Lessing's classic of German Enlightenment drama was picked up by Chichester in 2003. Now we have the same brilliantly lucid translation by Edward Kemp, but a slightly less dynamic production. But no matter: this is a play eminently worth seeing.
Set in Jerusalem in 1192, it seems a straightforward plea for mutual toleration between Jew, Muslim and Christian. The eponymous protagonist is a shrewd Jewish merchant who finds himself caught between the worlds of Saladin and the Crusaders. In a key scene he is forced by the sultan to arbitrate between the claims of the rival faiths. He answers with a riddling fable, derived from Boccaccio, which suggests that no one religion has a monopoly of wisdom. Instead, we should strive for "gentleness, tolerance, charity and a deep humility before the love of God".
The message could hardly be more timely. But Lessing's action is at odds with his theme. Nathan is wise and virtuous, but Christianity is represented by an intemperate Knight Templar who is all young, hotheaded and full of antisemitic arrogance. As Eric Bentley pointed out, the play is really addressed to Christians, telling them to mend their ways. It moves beyond preachiness to show the need for reconciliation and harmony. It cannot fail to move.
But Anthony Clark's production, in aiming for period fidelity, ends up looking slightly like an exotic Aladdin; this is a world, in Patrick Connellan's design, of pearly turbans, curled slippers and flower-encrusted robes. The production is also a little too laid-back, as if the battle for mutual understanding has been achieved before the action has begun. That said, Michael Pennington endows Nathan with just the right mixture of wiliness, wisdom and judicious stoicism. Sam Troughton's Templar is the epitome of impetuous, brazen folly. And, even if Vincent Ebrahim's Saladin is hardly the lion demanded by the text, Shelley King lends his sister a wonderful sinuous guile. But what really matters is Lessing's play: a seminal piece of world drama written in 1779 and banned by the Nazis in 1933, its theme speaks urgently and forcefully to us today.
· Until October 15. Box office: 020-7722 9301.
