An Age of Angels

A soccer ball is kicked over a school yard fence and leads to one of those American moments that's going to make shock headlines around the world.

Mark Soper, who also wrote the piece (and Change: The Upcoming War With Iran), plays all the characters caught up in the horror, working his way along a rail of clothing to become each in turn. It works like a set of three dimensional jigsaw pieces; slowly you see how each one forms part of the pattern and where they fit into the overall picture.

Oh, how I wish I could have liked it more. Soper as an actor can be really good, as he proves with his school bully and his dying black cop, both of which I was totally engaged with. But those came towards the end; too many of the early characters are given irritating mannerisms or voices.

The nerd's constant farting, the little girl's thweetness, the paedophile watcher's self-justificating whine, the road rage driver's apoplexy, all of these excluded me from perceiving the growing overall picture. I did enjoy the guy setting up a political photo opportunity and by the end a whole world has been created on either side of the school fence.

I respect the sincerity of the writing and the stamina of the performance. However the heavy-handedness of the early characters ensured that the later ones had too much to do to pull me into their world.