Close encounters | 4 June 2015

In October 2011 anti-capitalist vagrants built an open-air squat outside St Paul’s within shrieking distance of London’s financial heart. The City thrummed all night with the dob-dob-dob of bongo recitals while the rebels held angry debates beneath their plastic canopies and declared the Square Mile knee-deep in ordure. To press the point they used nearby alleys for their ablutions. This half-forgotten protest has become a play in which the central figure, the dean, has to choose between evicting and accommodating his crusty tenants. Conscience informs him that the noisy campers are Christ’s spiritual heirs. But temporal responsibility obliges him to heed his Square Mile parishioners and sweep the ragamuffins from the City’s doorstep.

The play is abstract, subtle, wordy, highly cerebral. Simon Russell Beale applies all his zestful intelligence to the role of the tortured dean but he seems to know that the emotional ingredients will never heat up beyond Gas Mark three.