David Edgar's new play picks up where Destiny left off 30 years ago: it is an exploration of racial tensions in post-war Britain. But, while I admire Edgar's desire to explore big issues on public stages and to instruct delightfully, I can't help feeling his new play offers somewhat tendentious explanations for the failure of multi-cultural policies.
Edgar's play starts with a New Labour female apparatchik being despatched to an obstinately Old Labour Northern city to sort out its financial and social problems. And Edgar makes great and entertaining sport with the clash of values and language. Alex, the Whitehall fixer, talks of performance indicators, strategic plans and modernisation agendas. Meanwhile the Old Labour gang, more used to making policy in smoke-filled frooms and harking back mistily to the days of miners' strikes, is forced to come to terms with out-sourcing, computerised targets and applications for EU money.
But, while the first half is gripping stuff for politics junkies and full of amusing satire on New Labour jargon, the second half gets into riskier territory. Following the reform of Edgar's mythical Wyverdale Council, the hoped-for harmony has not ensued. Instead race riots have occurred in which Asian youths have gone on the rampage attacking city-centre white businesses. And, having shown the judicial enquiry into the immediate cause of the riots, Edgar then backtracks to explore their real explanation.
It is at this point that Edgar's play loses me. He appears to suggest that New Labour, by diverting public money into politically correct gestures such as faith festivals and by appearing to privilege the Asian community, has somehow exacerbated racial tension; and Alex, who has spurred the council into modernisation at the expense of local services, accepts a measure of responsibility. But this seems to me a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't argument. If Labour failed to make provision for ethnic minorites, it would be accused of insensitivity; if it does so, it is accused of fanning white racism.
In short, Edgar's play doesn't quite add up and overlooks the many other sources of racial tension in Britain. But at least it occupies the Olivier stage with a certain bravura in Michael Attenborough's production. It also gets good performances from Emma Fielding as the jargon-spouting Alex, David Troughton as the broad-bottomed, defiant council leader and Oliver Ford-Davies as a one-time staunch Labourite who questions the party's allegiance to gesture politics. There is bags of fizz and energy on stage. But where Destiny explained the rise of 70s fascism, this play gives a simplified account of contemporary racial problems.
· Until October 21 Box office: 020-7452 3000
