 Mike Bartlett has moved from writing minimalist dramas to maximalist epics without any intervening stage of development. Having tackled climate change in Earthquakes in London, he now comes up with another big phantasmagoric fable, one that acquires urgency and force by asking if there is any alternative to freemarket capitalism and unbridled military adventurism.  Bartlett's structure takes time to grasp but employs something of the collage technique of a movie such as Robert altman's Short Cuts. In the first half, set in a nightmarish modern London, we are introduced to a bewildering mix of characters: militant protesters, a coarse solicitor, an atheist academic, an american emissary and the Tory prime minister who happens to be a lonely, post-Thatcherite woman. They are all subject to the same bad dreams and are either drawn to, or connected to, a charismatic youth named John who preaches the need to reject the prevailing worship of money, materialism and success.  Only in the second half does Bartlett's purpose become clear. as the government edges towards support of an american invasion of Iran, Bartlett stages a set-piece debate between the missionary John, the pragmatic PM and the cancerous, Islamophob 