THE SCOTSMAN 4* REVIEW OF PERSAE

Persae

****

ANDREA MULLANEY

SMIRNOFF UNDERBELLY (VENUE 61)

BARBARA Bush is known over here, if at all, for having white hair and having authored a book by her dog. In Van Badham's incendiary new play, this wife of one president, mother of another, becomes a haunted figure of classical tragedy.

It's a radical update of Aeschylus's The Persians, and it works, drawing on the rhythms of epic poetry to portray a war as devastating as any in the ancient world. It opens with a sharp statement of intent: over news footage from right-wing network Fox TV, anchors intone the facile headlines, reducing death to soundbites, with phrases from The Persians seeping in, so anti-aircraft guns are mentioned alongside swords, and chariots with helicopters.

The "mother of the nation" is to appear on Good Morning America to rally patriotic spirits with a feel-good medal presentation to a returning hero. But Barbara goes wildly off-message, horrifying her bland, smiling interviewer with an unplanned lurch into reality. The president, who to her is still her little boy, is over in the Middle East and his mother is wracked with nightmarish visions.

Advisers and spin doctors panic as these apocalyptic predictions spill out of her. "I speak for mothers," she says, and there's genuine shock in imagining how it would be to suddenly hear a real human emotion interrupt the official line. The hero, too, is not what he is supposed to be, but damaged, brutalised and brutal. He also has a truth to speak, which is inconvenient, distasteful.

The fallout comes, inevitably. The Australian prime minister is blown up, leaving a grieving daughter. Badham - an Australian working in Britain - clearly wants to show that it's not just an American war and that, as this week's news reminds us, we're all involved. But in dramatic terms, the switch in focus is awkward and the ending, in which the excellent cast gathers to sing The Beatles' Across The Universe as a lament, peters out.

Still, it's a powerful production overall and confirms Badham's status as one of the most intelligent political voices around.