Arches Theatre, Glasgow, and touring 2007

The Algebra of Freedom presented by 7:84 Theatre Company.

IN RECENT MONTHS there has been a sea change in the mood of our playwrights. Last year their plays were full of righteous political anger at the “war on terror”, the invasion of Iraq and the threat to civil liberties. It isn’t that they’ve all gone soft, but in 2007 their attention has shifted.

Now the most pressing question is not to do with injustice but reconciliation. What happens next after the troops pull out, the bodies are cleared up and the land mines discharged? Will we be dragged down by the violations of the past or can we move forward in a spirit of forgiveness?

It is on this thematic wave that Raman Mundair rides with ‘The Algebra of Freedom’, directed by Jo Ronan for a five-week tour of Scotland. In it she juxtaposes two stories: that of a policeman involved in the shooting of an innocent Brazilian on the London underground, a close parallel of the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, and that of a bereaved Muslim husband whose sense of rage and despair tempts him towards fundamentalist terrorism.

It seems inevitable that the play will culminate in a violent confrontation as west meets east, grievance meets grievance and alienation meets alienation. Instead, Mundair surprises us. When finally the two strands of her play come together it is to explore the possibility of healing the raw wounds of the past.

Beneath the surface aggression and quick temper of the grieving Parvez (Simon Rivers) and the police officer Tony (Robert Jack), Mundair reveals their vulnerable side. They have much in common.

Firstly, each of them is haunted by ghosts: Maryam Hamidi’s Fatima gives level-headed advice to Parvez while Oliver Miceli’s Brazilian corpse plays Tony’s fun-loving flatmate. Secondly, each of them is pressured by their peers to go to the dark side: Qaseem Ansari’s Waheed preaches the religion of retribution to Parvez while Lewis Howden’s Jack espouses the importance of a police cover-up to Tony. And thirdly, each of them struggles to balance their personal sense of loss and guilt against society’s thirst for order and control.

In this 90-minute play, Mundair’s punchy writing is given forceful life by the six-strong cast, hampered a little by too many short television-like scenes. It’s limitation on a political level is that it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know and on a dramatic level that, however sympathetic we might feel about the two men’s plight, it does not deeply move us.

All the same, ‘The Algebra of Freedom’ stands as a humane analysis of the social pressures that could bear down on any of us and of the difficulty of doing the right thing.

The Algebra of Freedom is at Universal Hall, Findhorn, on 14 September.

© Mark Fisher, 2007

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• 7:84 Theatre Company
• Mark Fisher’s Scottish Theatre Blog