This is a play that hurtles across the landscape of political apathy, horns blaring and whistles screeching, as it issues a strident wake-up-call to those whose politics can be summed up in a shrug of the shoulders. Visually and audibly the most devastating moment is a computerised recreation of a train derailment - yet the true power lies with the steady accretion of human voices, from disaster victims to fat-cat controllers, trying to work out the terminal illness afflicting our railway system.
The Permanent Way - which was greeted with enraged enthusiasm by Nicholas de Jongh when it opened in York last year - is firmly rooted in revelatory interviews conducted by Sir David Hare, Max Stafford-Clark, and the company of actors.
One man reveals how his memory went "black and white" as a result of the trauma of being in a train accident, while a high-powered female investment banker discusses how engineering fatally became a poor cousin to share prices after privatisation.
Hare and Stafford-Clark have constructed not only a searing piece of documentary theatre, but also a potent metaphor for what happens when a complacent government stamps on public opinion.
However, in the blizzard of fascinating and moving views, it would have been interesting to hear the devil's advocate's view on privatisation challenged more directly. John Prescott comes across as too much of a clown for sustained debate, and the privatisers' ridiculous argument that the air industry is an example of successful privatised transport could have been dismantled very revealingly.
As the evening flashes by in a series of elliptical witness statements, ranging from the frustrated passenger who compares the rail system to Gogol's Russia (bureaucracy, inefficiency and vodka) to Lloyd Hutchinson's smooth Richard Branson-style entrepreneur, one is struck that due to cynical profiteering, re-nationalisation would prove a long and arduous route. Does Blair's government have time to respond to this timely red light?
The Permanent Way
