If there is a more intractable subject for an evening's entertainment than an African genocide, then it has to be the paperwork pertaining to an African genocide. Yet Steve Waters's bold new drama switches confidently between machete-wielders in Africa and pen-pushers in the European parliament, arguing that the fatal lack of understanding between the two continents is as fundamental as the dissonance of our different musical scales.
Waters makes reference to the recent tragic histories of Burundi and Rwanda, though he opts to base his observations on the fictional state of Irundi in the Great Lakes region of Africa. We meet Geoff Fallon, an eager young twentysomething who arrives in a small tribal settlement with a TEFL qualification and a backpack full of impeccable socialist ideals. Twenty years on, he has morphed into a bearded, bad-suited MEP, faced with a dilemma: his closest Irundian friend now stands accused of mass murder.
The situation portends Fallon's political ruin, yet the drama is based on his determination to rage his way into oblivion. Though he appears to have made the fatal miscalculation of backing the wrong horse, Fallon's passion and first-hand experience strike sparks against the cold, blunt edges of European bureaucracy.
Nigel Lindsay gives an incandescent performance of righteous fury. His hot, pinkish countenance registers several different shades of rising indignation - he literally talks himself blue in the face. He establishes no doubt that it eats into every fibre of his being that rivers of blood are shed in Africa while we produce piles of European mandates to staunch the flow. "We sit here in this castle so high up that we can't smell the burning," he seethes. "We move paper around in response to paper, we make judgements from so very fucking high up from this temple of ignorance."
Waters marshals his argument well, cutting back and forth between time and place to counterpoint idealistic young Geoff in Africa with impotent old Geoff in the corridors of power. But though his play undertakes an exceptionally ambitious journey, no one would claim it makes an easy ride.
· Until June 7. Box office: 0114-249 6000.
