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Sat 03 Mar 2007Metaphors for modern timesCultureShock/Fintan O'Toole:Sam Shepard's new play is an artist's critique of the state of the US, in which a journey back to authenticity is an aesthetic response to politicsPolitical plays can be direct, with an obvious and simple connection to contemporary events. But the best of them tend to be indirect. One of the ironies of political theatre, indeed, is that such plays tend to look fairly similar whether they are written in conditions of relative freedom or of tight censorship. When playwrights live in police states - Shakespeare in Tudor England, Jean Anouilh in Nazi-occupied France, Marin Sorescu in Ceaucescu's Romania - they have to use the resources of metaphor. Shakespeare set his political plays in distant times or far-off plays. Anouilh staged a version of Antigone, trusting his audience to make the connections with their contemporary lives. Sorescu wrote a play about Vlad Dracula between whose lines a tuned-in audience could discern the lineaments of Ceaucescu.