Culture: Challenging Stuff Which Doesn't Come Close to the Heart of the Matter ; Keith Mckenna Reviews New Plays About Britain at War Coproduced by Birmingham Rep and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at the Edinburgh Festival. Visual Arts

Summary

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Britain is going through a long period of war that is having a profound effect on our society. It is also proving to be a constant source of material for theatre, and two new plays on this theme by Simon Stephens and Zinnie Harris are being performed at this years Edinburgh festival.

The Birmingham Rep and the Traverse Theatre have jointly produced the UK premier of Simon Stephens sombre play Pornography, which conjures up a London on the eve of the July 2005 bombings. On a bleak stage littered with TVs beneath long lines of hanging cables we glimpse the separate, messy lives of eight people, one of whom is carrying a bomb to the Circle Line.

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Extract

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Culture: Challenging Stuff Which Doesn't Come Close to the Heart of the Matter ; Keith Mckenna Reviews New Plays About Britain at War Coproduced by Birmingham Rep and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at the Edinburgh Festival. Visual Arts

The action constantly shifts between four monologues and two dramatised scenes.

The effect is to evoke a city of people in motion but never quite con...

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