Taking the patriots to book

No one could accuse Stephen Sewell's provocative new political drama of having nothing to say. Australian academic Talbot Finch (Jonathan Grey Lewis) teaches in a university in New York and, post-September 11 and the passing of the Patriot Act, has just completed a book comparing contemporary America to Nazi Germany.

In the first scene, Finch is shown delivering an impromptu lecture about his theory to his colleagues. When he finds himself threatened with trumped-up sexual harassment charges and pursued by a political philosophy-spouting gunman, his increasingly absurd predicament begins to resemble that of Josef K in Kafka's The Trial.

Sewell's play has won several awards - presumably the length of its title is some sort of record, too - but it's hard to believe they were given for the quality of the writing rather than the righteousness of the sentiments. Sam Walters's spirited but ultimately overheated and over-long production does nothing to conceal the plotting improbabilities or the flimsiness of much of the characterisation.

Most damagingly, where the play sets out to defend the importance of the unprejudiced Socratic quest for truth, its own methods of deduction and reasoning are anything but open-minded. Thus it's not enough that the Australian intellectual's American opponents should be wrong politically, they are also revealed to be adulterers, alcoholics, hypocrites and racists - which is less than satisfying from a dramatic point of view.

Until Dec 11, Orange Tree Theatre, 1 Clarence Street TW9, Mon to Sat 7.45pm, Thu mats 2.30pm, Sat mats 4pm, £6 to £16. Tel: 020 8940 3633. www.orangetreetheatre.co.uk Tube/Rail: Richmond

Myth, Propaganda And Disaster In Nazi Germany And Contemporary America