Staging a revolution

David Edgar's extraordinary six-hour theatre marathon consists of two interlinked plays, Mothers Against and Daughters of the Revolution, in which he composes an impassioned and nostalgic requiem for the passing and betrayal of the American political dreams of the Sixties.

It comes to us now in a highly efficient though not forceful enough production by Tony Taccone, director of Berkeley's Repertory Theatre.

Instead of suggesting how the idealistic dreamers and protesters of that radical decade have been compromised by experience and time, Edgar attempts something more subtle. It was not only Left-wingers in

Sixties America, he reminds us, who were visionaries. Some young Republicans wrote blueprints for political and economic liberty and even approved libertarianism.

Edgar deals with adherents to all these lost causes. Sheldon Vine, a liberal Republican candidate, for a gubernatorial election, and Michael Bern, a lefty Democratic University professor, are the plays' obstinate heroes: each is shown struggling to remain true to their old political ideals in a transformed political climate where principle gives way to expediency and argument is suborned by the seductive insinuations of spin and TV advertising.

Sadly, the discursive, complex and elliptic quality of Edgar's writing sometimes makes full comprehension difficult. Mothers Against, which awkwardly assumes the form of a smart living-room drama, deals with process rather than conflict.

Bill Geisslinger's Vine takes part in a mock television debate to prepare himself for a TV encounter with his female Democratic opponent. He reveals a liberality that his campaign team predictably fails to subdue.

By contrast, Daughters of the Revolution, which masquerades as a political whodunnit and whisks from homeland to forest, is overwhelmingly poignant. It abounds with theatrical sense and sensibility.

In attempting to find out who betrayed his Revolutionary Protest group to the FBI in 1972, Terry Layman's superb, shabby university professor discovers his old heroes lost and changed. The altruistic political blackmail which he attempts and the rebellious eco-warriors whom he meets, sound defiant notes of liberalism.

Until 2 April. Information: 0845 120 7550.

Continental Divide: Mothers Against