Two new plays about the BNP opened this week and with them so did the old debate about whether any play ever changed anything.
"No play in the whole of history, in all the countries of the world, has ever changed a policy of the world," said wise old Peter Brook recently. The director is probably right. But what plays can change is attitudes, as long as it is not obvious that changing attitudes is what the playwright set out to do. This proves to be the Achilles heel of Philip Ridley's Moonfleece which boldly combines the poetical with the political.
As with Ridley's brilliant and furious 2005 play Mercury Fur, Moonfleece is set in a disused high-rise council flat. For BNP activist Curtis this squalid place contains happy family memories but also memories of the day his father was murdered by black muggers. Curtis's mother has found a new life with Mr Avalon, the leader of the local far-right party into which Curtis has been absorbed.
It is worth remembering that the fortysomething Ridley is targeting a teenage audience. Strange then that this play feels so dated. The squatter Link (so called because he always used to go missing) is joined by gay activist Jez, disabled clairvoyant Nina, and fiery, streetwise Asian girl Alex to berate bovver boys with cries of "fascist" and "Nazi", the kind of invective fired at the National Front in the 1970s.
In an echo of that time, when David Edgar's play Destiny about the far right attracted protests from the extreme right, Ridley's play has been attacked by the BNP, which will serve nicely as a badge of honour.
I am not saying that today's far-right deserve Nazi insults any less than their forebears. The trouble is that here they come from Ridley's politically engaged and committed youngsters, not one of whom is infected by today's disease of apathy. It makes for an unconvincing view of the way the world is now.
And even though director David Mercatali's gets strong performances from a young and talented cast, it is hard to imagine who in Ridley's intended audience is going to recognise their own lives, or whose attitudes will be changed. (Tel: 020 7613 7498)