Culture Wars
Luke Robins-Grace

October 2003 (online)

For the bemused leftie trying to get a grip on post 9/11 imperialism, terrorism and spin-cycle democracy, Van Badham's latest play is Nu-Politics 101.

Set in the context of a bombing campaign run by nihilistic middle-class intellectuals, Camarilla neatly summarises the current spectrum of leftist opinion seen through the looking glass of global terrorism and the state crack-down on civil liberties.

Our heroine (of sorts) is Maggie Tanner, a prominent left-wing intellectual whose life is hammered with the double whammy of being caught in a bomb blast with her daughter, Rebekah, and then visited by her estranged step-son David.

We follow Maggie and her family as they thrash out family sagas alongside their own conflicting reactions to the draconian Insurgent's Act, introduced in response to the bombings.

Her husband John Althorpe, the northern trades unionist and slightly reluctant Labour party member, seems unable to get beyond the question, 'What else can we do?' Maggie is repulsed that he and his local party branch have caved in and voted to support the government's measure. 'Bring back plastic bullets! Bring back curfews!' she shouts in disbelief. 'Take away civil freedom and you are the enemy,' she says. 'Attack the conditions that breed the hatred.'

And then we have the 'Bond Street Bombers' who are responsible for the ongoing bombing campaign. We never know their precise demands - a reflection of the broad church that is the anti-globalisation movement. By showing this range of views, Camarilla asks how we avoid intellectual nihilism when faced with the threat of democratic exclusion by Western leaders' acting under the cover of protecting us from the bogus threat of terrorism.

Badham doesn't know, and doesn't even try to answer her own question. She pointedly refuses to condemn either Maggie's intellectual posturing or the act-now-think-later approach of a violent youth. What a shame, some might say. But although the discussion is stunted, it is still useful. What is typical about Maggie's approach is that she does not move beyond the rhetoric of condemning illiberal measures in their own terms. She is not able to place them in the context of a broader political narrative - and neither is the latter-day liberal left.

Is it about oil, human rights, fair trade, Western intervention or pathological arrogance? It is the left's lack of coherence that Van Badham, wittingly or not, throws up here. Badham has a talent for the zeitgeist, often explored through a family scenario, and for asking pertinent questions. And unlike many modern writers, she does so without psychologising or moralising.

If there is a criticism it is that her political points can lack a sense of intrigue or sophistication, and can seem curiously extraneous despite being at the heart of her work. This is partly because her talent for naturalistic dialogue is so pronounced that it takes centre stage and leaves paint-by-numbers politics in the wings.

Badham says relationships and family are metaphors, but they are written too well for the roles they play in her work. It will be interesting to see if she moves towards the Arthur Miller genre seen in Death of a Salesman, where the metaphor is all that is needed to explain the political sub-text without having to actually spell it out.

Read this article on Culture Wars website.