David Hare has written some of the best British plays of the past 30 years (Fanshen, The Secret Rapture, Plenty) and some of the most teeth-grindingly awful. Works such as the smug My Zinc Bed, the tedious The Breath of Life and the inept The Blue Room are enough to bring me out in an allergic rash. This unevenness is reflected in his trilogy of plays, first produced at the National Theatre over a decade ago, on church, politics (or rather Neil Kinnock's losing Labour party) and the judiciary, which are now being revived by an increasingly confident Birmingham Rep.
The first two plays demonstrate the two sides of David Hare: Racing Demon is a great piece of drama; The Absence of War is a bad play, but a completely fascinating piece of journalism. Jonathan Church and Rachel Kavanaugh's terrific productions succeed in making a case for both of them.
The curious thing is that it should be Racing Demon, the small play concerned as much with private matters of faith and belief as the institution of the Church of England, that has lasted the better. In many ways, although it hones in on one specific aspect of the fabric of contemporary British life, it speaks in a much more general way and with both passion and compassion about the way we live now. The crisis of the Reverend Lionel Espy (Jack Shepherd at his fumbling, puzzled best) - the changing church in which he finds himself; his sense of no longer knowing what he believes but his certainty that maybe we just need to listen to each other and be kinder to each other; his inability to translate that into his relationship with his wife or children - is the crisis of a wider society. Racing Demon is a great play because it is so obviously a human play, highlighting the gap between what we are and what we might be, the society we do have and the society we could have.
At first sight The Absence of War is the louder and more public play. But because it deals - albeit very entertainingly - with a particular part of the Labour party's history, it seems less relevant and more dated. It is like reading a 10-year-old newspaper, more of sociological than immediate interest. In a really fine, exceptionally well-acted production, the best moment comes at the end, when Malcolm Storry's defeated Labour leader jokingly suggests to his team that if they wanted to win elections they should all go off and join the Tory party. Which of course is exactly what Tony Blair and his gang did, except they called it New Labour.
· Until April 19. Box office: 0121-236 4455.
