So, if you had the responsibility for making the choice, what would you have done? Would you have let Saddam Hussein carry on in Iraq on the grounds that we had no right to interfere and that by doing so, we might cause more harm than good? What if the domestic equivalent of Saddam was living next door and every night you could hear him beating up his pregnant wife? Would you still think it was right to stand by and do nothing? Or would you feel that you had a moral imperative to steam in and try to stop him, whatever the consequences?
The liberal conscience is put under the microscope in Tasmin Oglesby's latest play, which brings the war back home and tests the relationship of an affluent, tolerant couple, Soph and Max, who find it increasingly hard to concentrate on saving the world with their eco-loo and solar panels because of the screams coming from next door where Ali is giving his wife Hana another black eye.
It is easy to see what attracted the Tricycle to this play, and there is probably a scorcher to be written on the ability of the liberal conscience to tie itself into knots. This isn't it. Hampered by its verse form, which often makes the writing seem trite, and characterisations that ensure Soph and Max are never more than smug caricatures, Oglesby's play is a series of ideas and arguments in search of a full dramatic life.
The War Next Door feels like a play that has been scrupulously plotted, but written without real passion. Soph and Max's exchanges seldom rise above dramatised argument or sitcom parody, and there is only one moment when the evening catches alight, in a devastating and revealing monologue by Hana. The final, awkwardly staged scene finally tips the evening into farce, so that what should be shocking merely seems silly.
· Until March 3. Box office: 020-7328 1000.
