I began to tire of emaciated parables set everywhere in general and nowhere in particular. And although Zinnie Harris's Solstice is a kind of prequel to her Midwinter, shown at the Swan last year, it has little of the moral force of that play, which really had something to say about war's destruction of personal identity.
In Solstice we are in an unnamed city divided by a river, religion, politics and economics. On the poor, oppressed side of the bank Michel, a devout candlemaker, and his ailing wife, Therese, struggle to survive. But first Michel learns that the wealthy rivals across the water plan to bulldoze all the buildings and look for minerals in the mud. Worse, the pacific Michel finds that his son, Adie, has been involved in an act of terrorist retaliation against the oppressors leading to scores of deaths.
Almost everything that happens in the play could be paralleled by recent events in Baghdad, Belfast or Bosnia. But, in creating a multi-purpose historical mosaic, Harris drains actions of their specific significance. Clearly, she is writing about the difficulty of maintaining personal moral values in a world where might is right and religion is a source of conflict.
However, if she observed what Blake called "the holiness of the minute particular" her arguments would have more weight.
If anything does emerge, it is the sense of a world in which the generations are as divided as cities and nations. For the young, guns are natural props, sex is casual and the cycle of revenge is end lessly perpetuated. But even here, the absence of precise context leads Harris into generalised truths that may not pertain in every society.
But, whatever the flaws, Harris's production makes good use of the space and the actors. Peter Bygott's Michel is the embodiment of myopic puritan zeal, Suzanne Burden lends his wife a poignant physical and spiritual disintegration and Alan Morrissey as Adie and Sally Tatum as his girlfriend skilfully evoke teenage alienation. However, after this and Debbie Tucker Green's Stoning Mary, I yearn for a play that sets the violence of modern life in a recognisable context rather than offering us an abbreviated allegory.
· In rep until July 9. Box office: 0870 609 1110.
