David Greig is not only astonishingly prolific - he is also one of the most intellectually stimulating dramatists around. After the success of Pyrenees, he has now come up with a political allegory that goes beyond ritual anti-Americanism to explore the complex relationship between the one global superpower and the rest of the world.
Greig's premise is that an American pilot has crash-landed in a distant country rent by civil war. Since the Americans fund the country's oppressive government and the pilot has landed in rural, rebel territory, he represents both a temptation and an opportunity. To a guerrilla captain, he is a hostage who can draw the attention of the world's media to his country's suffering. To an ex-Marxist translator, he is a reminder of his own love-hate for the seductive great Satan. To a trader, he is a source of potential profit. But to Evie, the 16-year-old daughter of a local farmer, the pilot is an object of humane curiosity.
Greig's calculated geographical imprecision is sometimes frustrating. And his plot is occasionally driven by allegorical necessity rather than probability, especially when the captain enlists Evie as a militant religious symbol for his cause. But what Greig captures excellently is the idea of the world as a shrinking global village dominated by US values. A hilltop farmer instantly recognises an image of Daffy Duck, and the 4,000 songs on the pilot's computer entrance the villagers. At the same time, the captain shrewdly observes that the tragedy of the US is that "they think American is the same as human".
The play's format is that of a Brechtian lehrstück or teaching piece; but Greig goes beyond simplistic propaganda to explore both America's cultural colonialism and its residual mystique. He is also well served by Ramin Gray's production, which keeps the actors on stage throughout and which uses Jonathan Girling's haunting score to counterpoint world music and imported rock. David Rintoul's fatalistic captain, Paul Chahidi's ambivalent translator, Sinead Keenan's inquisitive Evie and David Rogers's trussed-up pilot all give impressive performances, and Lizzie Clachan's design conjures up a truly cataclysmic climax. Although I sometimes wish the RSC would move on from allegory to actuality, this is a richly provocative new play.
· In rep until July 9. Box office: 0870 609 1110.
