Our Days of Rage

Gaddafi, riots in London and young people caught between apathy and protest - the NYT summer season under Waterloo Station is as hotly topical as a Molotov cocktail. If director Paul Roseby's aim had been to commission a new play of national significance on all of the above, he probably shouldn't have asked nine inexperienced young writers to contribute sections. Despite being firmly framed by the story of harrowed Libyan expat Hannah, these scenes are too bitty and improbable to portray a life. But plenty of London theatres nurture new writers. Roseby, in this exciting underground promenade through the history of Libya and London, provides a rarer and more democratic opportunity: to create a thrilling ensemble piece.

With the more talented actors playing cameo roles and swelling the crowd, this is unstarry troupe work which brings an inspired youth to these damp and difficult tunnels. The protest scenes raise heckles as the actors, mingling with the standing spectators behind police tapes, impose baton-rattling order or fall, the slow-motion victims of an explosion. The most moving moment comes during the depiction of anti-Gaddafi protests in London which claimed the life of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, as the actors among us whisper their way into an incendiary a capella rendition of 'London Calling' by The Clash.

Yes, the script, the acting and the overflowing climax are sometimes naive. But this is a hugely effective spectacle. Roseby has given his big cast a well-organised chance to make the kind of event theatre young audiences relish. And it is the opposite of apathetic.