What Does It Take To Slay A Dragon? 
53Two, Manchester 
★★★★★

SHOULD we celebrate if a racist loses his job and has to go on the dole? Should a refugee family fleeing war get a council flat ahead of a British pensioner with declining mobility? Does the colour matter on the face you blame for failure?

“What does it take to slay a dragon?” deftly poses but doesn’t answer these questions. This isn’t propaganda. Indeed one of its defining and best aspects is to lure you in to the idea it is going to deliver an easy, memetic response perfect for “X” before puncturing that. It’s both incredibly contemporary and echoes the same discussions we’ve been having for decades; identity, belonging, reaction as capitalism in decay.

In an act of Aristophanic bravery, Harrison stands or sits on stage with the actors throughout, chipping in with the refrain, “when I was writing this play.”

The Athenian mode is quite suited for a piece where the City is a character, wracked by the agonies of democracy. As is the current moment, in which we have widely forgone political violence and even fights between ultras are not done with fists but with bardic battles on social media. Sections of society are treated not as members of the same polity, but like XL bullies to be crated and rotated through public space by a paternal police force. Muzzled for our own good and to not upset anyone else in the ever-shrinking public realm.

With music and poetry echoing Remembrance the work emphasises how we exist in a wreckage of invented Imperial Victoriana, and a wartime promise which no-one under 90 knows as memory rather than history.

The cast are all outstanding, though Simon Naylor as Billy is a particular force, embodying that deep tension of not being able to articulate what you think because no-one’s ever taught you how. You can see the physical pain as he tries to reconcile his idea of goodness with what’s happening to him.

The sheer absence of the trade union movement, from the play and from the discussion, is painful in its accuracy. The force that stood between the working class and the caprice of capital, and in so doing won the right to be listened to, has retreated to its shattered archipelago, not even a thought in the lives of the bogus self-employed.

Are we, as socialists, as shop stewards, as citizens bound by solidarity to defend even those who hate us from the dragon? Or is that a job for the saints instead? We don't have an answer. But Harrison puts forward the question, and does a tremendous service in doing so.

Runs until June 20. Box office: 53two.com.