Henry Adam's insightful new play offers a rather more sophisticated account of neighbourhood politics, but ultimately, the sentiment is the same. It's an unlikely moral for a play about the War on Terror, but the genius of The People Next Door is that it keys into what that war really means to people - ie, not much.

Nigel is a mentally ill, heroin-smoking loser with no family, and indeed no grip on society at all, but for all that he is the most 'together' character in the play. When a detective tries to enlist him as an unwilling agent in an anti-terrorist operation, Nigel is forced to acquaint himself with the situation, and to ask himself whose side he is on.

But the 'them and us' rhetoric of the War on Terror fails to impress Nigel, and not just because he's of mixed race and attracted to the gentle and thoughtful Muslims he encounters at the mosque. In fact the play draws attention to a much broader crisis of political loyalty and identity.

Despite his mistreatment by the police, and perhaps by society in general, Nigel never looks like defecting. Defecting to what? The whole point of the War on Terror is that the enemy is a phantom. Nigel 'dresses like an American and talks like a Jamaican', but even when he dresses up like Osama bin Laden, it isn't because he's attracted to any kind of political identity. The British state, in the person of 'Supercop', can't even drive Nigel into the hands of the enemy, much less inspire him to identify with Great Britain.

Anyway, we are reminded that such loyalties have a dark side. Nigel's upstairs neighbour Mrs Mac reminisces about growing up in Glasgow, and how her brother was 'very patriotic - always on the look out for Catholics'. So much for political identity, for ideology.

In place of politics, The People Next Door posits a simple neighbourliness based on common decency and genuine toleration (as opposed to official multiculturalism). Nigel may be a halfwit, but as an unmistakably nice guy, he is the perfect poster boy for such an outlook.

The People Next Door is a fine play, with excellent performances and an incredible set. It isn't inspiring and it isn't going to change the world, but it's very contemporary. You don't like it? Eat your mince and tatties and shut the f...k up.

by Dolan Cummings
Culture Wars