Bogged down in words

10 April 2012

I found this epic drama by David Edgar about the complex, contemporary games of diplomatic negotiation to bring peace to a 1990s war in some mythical, former Soviet republic, a bemusing mental trial. Powerful actors in Michael Attenborough's production stoke up the dramatic heat. But trying to keep up with Edgar's dashing train of thought and argument, with 34 characters from eight countries caught up in contemporary historical studies and the toils of war for eleven years and eleven trans-European scenes, left me foggily lagging behind.

This is the third of Edgar's plays to deal with the Europe that has emerged since the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War fizzled out. The playwright's tone - earnest, pedagogic and long-winded - is a symptom of his recurrent melancholia in the face of all the warring that has unhappily followed on from communism's collapse. Since The Prisoner's Dilemma deals with the imaginary province of Drozhdania, which is trying to achieve its freedom from the equally fictitious Soviet republic of Kavkhazia, it's clear Edgar is working by analogy.

We're supposed to guess and glean the points of comparison with real-life struggles for autonomy. But Edgar, by refusing to take real countries, real war and diplomacy as his starting point remains irritatingly stranded in the loftiness of airy generalities. On Es Devlin's bare stage set, with an upper platform and a circular, negotiating table often centre-stage, the dilemma of trying to divine the intentions of your opposite number or enemy in the negotiating game looms large and frequent. Larry Lamb's suave American Professor of Conflict Studies takes to the diplomatic stage to help do America's self-interested bartering business.

It's a process, according to Edgar's vignettes of bluff, butchery on the warfront, torture and double-dealing at conference table, that keeps the contenders desperately aware of the frustrating hardness of reading the enemy minds. The Prisoner's Dilemma is clearly grounded on meticulous, wideranging research - Edgar even provides a Kavkhaz and Drozhdani dialect, based on three existent languages. But the play keeps buckling under the weight of its abstruseness and verbosity. At least Penny Downie's elegant Finnish peace-broker, Zoe Waites's butch, impassioned fighter for Drozhdania and Diana Kent as an aidworker, who dreadfully realises the dangers of refusal to negotiate under duress, are remarkably impressive.

The Prisoner's Dilemma

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