The Angry Brigade, James Graham’s new play, is being marketed as “a heart-stopping thriller.” Yet this evening’s performance was far more muted than this description suggests. Graham’s invitation to the play’s director is intriguing. The two halves can be performed in either order; perhaps simultaneously to different audiences; perhaps by different casts; “perhaps,” he writes, “just do as you like. 

This inquisitive spirit is, in many respects, what this evening’s performance aspired to but did not quite realise. The story takes place in the 1970s, but recalls contemporary themes: social disorder, disillusionment with politicians, young people resorting to violence to express their sense of alienation. Tonight the first half followed the efforts of “The Branch” – four largely interchangeable police officers collectively representing order, which gradually dissolves into chaos as they become obsessed with the mentality of the anarchists they are pursuing.

The plot is thin on details: John, Jim, Anna and Hilary (“The Brigade”) set off bombs in an attempt to air their somewhat general grievances. They cast themselves as revolutionaries, rehearsing (rather didactically) the anarchist creed, replete with all its ambiguities. The second half follows their story – the more engaging of the two narratives – but similarly falls short of the writer’s stated ambition that the form of the play should be as chaotic as its theme.

Members of The Brigade hyperactively reorder the set while conducting set-piece debates about the nature of freedom. As their world becomes more militant, Anna emerges as the disenchanted rebel who puts their enterprise at risk. Unfortunately, the (often ingenious) staging and dialogue lack any real sense of threat. Bomb attacks are abstract, offstage unrealities. Rather than loud music, flashing lights and sensory overload, this is anarchy sanitised for the theatregoers of Middle England. At times this holding back appeared deliberately ironic, as though we are forever outside the world of the Brigade, looking in with baffled misunderstanding.

Only in the final scene did real stakes emerge. Anna, moved to confess her doubts to Jim, became visibly, viscerally vulnerable. A sterling turn from both Patsy Ferran and Harry Melling sold this scene entirely, only for the lights to come up as the story ends, abruptly and unresolved.

Ultimately, neither order nor chaos were really manifest on stage – only diluted reflections of the two. Graham and director James Grieve open the door to some enticing, urgent and compelling themes, but fail to explore them fully.