Edinburgh Guide  
Ritchie Smith
10 August 2006

This quietly brilliant play is largely a battle of ideas between the old, civilized world - represented by understanding, decent-minded, physically feeble James (think Gore Vidal) - and a younger, more virile opponent, Harrison, an angry young man desperate for significance. (Read Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber.)

There is great wit and telling line after telling line in this confrontation, as Harrison tries to take the moral high ground and James punctures his angry, ignorant but eminently deadly seriousness. 'Biography,' says Harrison (meaning history) 'is a waste of time' - but the author, and this play, know better. Peter Eyre, playing the Paris-exiled writer, gives a wonderfully wry and humane performance, matched - quite incredibly, given this is his first professional engagement - by Arthur Darvill, who is simultaneously very appealing, and a monster.

No doubt Edmund White sees the play as about America and its 'sheer ugliness' and disappointed hopes. Of course it is. Harrison has read 'The Turner Diaries' and he talks angrily about Waco and Ruby Ridge. But Harrison is more than American. In spirit he is the same as some young Muslim who reads the al-Qaeda Websites and talks in a rage about Palestine and Iraq. Though the terrorist here is caged and about to be executed, this is his play. Don't be fooled by the carefully unassuming style. This is likely to be one of the important plays in the 2006 Festival. Edmund White has given us a completely convincing (and sometimes almost charming) portrait of that angry, under-achieving, dispossessed young man who is our ruthless conscience and also our deadly enemy - the terrorist.

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