Bark but no bite at Blair's Britain

A brilliant fire-brand of the far Left such as Tariq Ali ought to be just the man to launch a scathing onslaught upon Tony Blair's lavishly privatising, warprone government that has spun itself into a cocoon of disasters.

The Illustrious Corpse is hopefully described as a "biting satire which takes on New Labour". But Ali's verbally mild play never even manages to nibble at the vitals of this administration, let alone savage them.

Although you cannot miss the author's contempt for the Blairing of Britain and the warring with Iraq, the play proves more a farce than a serious political invective.

The corpse of the title is Britain's first black Home Secretary, Sir Huntley Palmer Jones, who lies dead in his living room one morning. His doctor-wife Desdemona has not only left the body lying around over night but also forgotten about his demise until she notices him on the floor and decides to phone the police.

The tone of the play, as this incident suggests, is at several farcical removes from reality and the distance grows. When the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Russell Dixon's rasping, lecherous Sir Richard, arrives on the scene, all prepared to arrange a cover-up, he proves himself a pale, poor relation of Joe Orton's shamelessly amoral policeman in Loot.

The farcical emphasis continues. The commissioner's function is to hear Desdemona's justification for murdering her husband. "You could call it a pre-emptive strike to encourage regime change," she says in the play's single line of real wit.

In laboured speeches that brook no argument, Desdemona tells a familiar story of Left-wing idealism compromised by eagerness for power and corrupt selling out of principles. Iqbal Khan's production is far too flippant, as is the vampish performance of Kristin Milward's Desdemona. At least Dixon's commissioner, with dyed hair and moustache, is delightfully furtive.

The Illustrious Corpse