Menier Chocolate Factory, London
Paul Grellong’s gripping dialogue makes a brisk plot and unlikable characters immensely watchable as a Harvard professor invites a white supremacist for a debate
‘I’m one of the good guys,” insists a beleaguered Harvard professor facing student protests after inviting a white supremacist to be part of a university debate on extremism. The defence, for Charles Nichols (Julian Ovenden), is that illogical or offensive arguments need to be heard in order to be dismantled, though hand-wringing principal Amy Katz (Tanya Franks) suggests he is doing this as an attention-grabbing career move.
Paul Grellong’s intelligent if schematic play incorporates themes of cancel culture, Nazi legacies and the intersection between freedom of expression and hate speech.
