Mixed messages from the home of mischief

unsayable in the 21st century? I’m not sure what’s unsayable about Fraser Grace’s Always Orange but it’s certainly unspeakable. A jumbled, scattergun mess of indiscriminate terrorist attacks on London and protests against the closing of libraries and cutting of language teaching in schools, it’s one of those dispiriting plays in which no one claps at the end because no one has the slightest idea as to whether it’s finished, or even properly started. There aren’t really characters, just mouthpieces for varying views. Director Donnacadh O’Briain manages to steer no clear line through the confusion.

Better, for sure, but still beset by all sorts of problems is Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier by Somalia Seaton. Seaton certainly has a central provocation to cherish: is there something murky, perhaps even downright nasty, hiding behind the carefully worn façade of white middle-class liberal values in this country? It should be a splendidly awkward line of enquiry, but Seaton gets herself into all sorts of muddle by seeming to equate in gravity a racially aggravated murder carried out by angry black student Aisha (Donna Banya) with the confused do-gooding of her white teacher Hawkins (Laura Howard).

Seaton and director Nadia Latif certainly paint a picture of a frazzled, presumably post-Brexit society where any pretence at community cohesion has long gone. Extremist views — expounded in group protests at the start of scenes — are all around and eloquent Aisha feels perpetually marginalised because of the colour of her skin. Yet none of the arguments, or characters, are given much space to breathe and develop, meaning that instead of reasoned, rounded debate, it’s all soundbites and shouting.