The latest from Theatre Absolute is an absolute mess, but it is a gripping mess powered by its own fury and sense of injustice. It may be unsubtle and incoherent, but if you are looking for political theatre, this is the real thing. There is nothing polite about it - it screeches and shouts.
Chris O'Connell's script is set 20 years hence in a dystopian world where the rich have formed a Global Economic Alliance that protects their interests and ensures the poor keep getting poorer. With nothing left to lose, the latter have taken to violence and, with a terrorist incident happening every two hours, the GEA has set up over 500 Guantánamo-style camps, some on airplanes that endlessly circle the world.
Arriving at Camp Zero, translator Alex and army private Tom find themselves in a nightmarish world of brutality, lies and censorship; when Alex decides the truth must be told, their lives are at risk. There is so much wrong with this play, but there is a great deal that's right, not least in the way it shows how we are prepared to curtail others' individual liberties to protect our own. The camp's chief interrogator is a chilling, pregnant psychologist who justifies her brutality because she is making the world a safer place for her unborn child.
OK, so Alex and Tom's naivety is hard to swallow, the relationship between Alex and the prisoner is sketchy, the structure confusing, the plotting stretches credulity, and Matt Aston's production doesn't know the meaning of the word quiet. But if this 90 minutes is indecently loud, that's because it points out that the real indecency is that, in standing quietly by and letting Guantánamo happen, we are potentially paving the way for a world of Camp Zeroes.
