FLESH AND BLOOD

Sherman Theatre Cardiff

It sometimes feels as if Wales is turning into a theme park. The mines have become heritage centres, the slag heaps are dry ski slopes, and the welcome in the valleys now comes with an AA star rating. Even the toll system on the Severn Bridge reinforces the feeling, with an admission charge to enter New Wales World, but none when leaving it. Yet behind the brave new world of Cardiff Bay, high tech microprocessor plants and Croeso I Cymru, there lurks a bleaker, grainier 'old' Wales. It is here that Helen Griffin's play is set.

Vernon (Brian Hibbard) is a Welsh Alf Garnett, sat in front of his television all day ranting against the dark forces who ride on the backs of the poor bloody Welsh: the Queen, the Asians and the bastard politicians. The comedy is sharp and punchy, a clatter of 'Til Death US Do Part' one-liners as Vernon spars with his long-suffering wife (Di Botcher), rebellious daughter (Michele McTernan) and thuggish teenage son (Steven Meo). Yet into this high quality sitcom environment slithers a far darker shadow, as the unthinking bigotry cascading from the lips of the father are transformed into something more sinister in the son.

Hibbard gives an excellent comic performance, but it is Botcher who is outstanding. Hers is the much trickier part, as she must span a far greater dramatic spectrum - from ditzy wife to anguished mother - to anchor the chiaroscuro within the play. Aided by tight characterisation by McTernan and Meo, she is the lynchpin which stops Flesh and Blood from slipping into easy comedy.

Flesh and Blood is that rarity, a powerful and moving piece which also manages to be satisfyingly funny. There sometimes seems to be paradigm in contemporary writing that a 'message' play cannot be truly funny, and a comedy should steer well clear of anything which might provoke change - or even thought - in its ready-to-laugh audience. Helen Griffin has proved that it is still perfectly possible to address serious issues such as multiculturalism with a finely-crafted comic script which lulls a audience into a powerful and scary examination of the harm which habitual bigotry and a tendency to blame one's misfortunes on others can cause.

Flesh and Blood is in many ways the perfect counterpoint to Patrick Jones' play Everything Must Go, which returns to the Sherman next month. Vernon's angry belief that "They are taking over our country" lies at the core of Everything Must Go's embittered message, but Griffin challenges the easy xenophobia, apathetic venom and bleak acquiescence inherent in Jones' play. In Griffin's world, New Wales need not be Whinging Wales. Amidst the laughter and the drama, Flesh and Blood holds out some promise that Cool Cymru encompasses fundamental social change, and not just megabuck rock bands and celebrity weathergirls.

TOBY O'CONNOR MORSE