Joe Sutton's Complicit

With Pilar (Pili) Echave (Roubini,Felitsa's half-sister's granddaughter), last night saw COMPLICIT, Joe Sutton's new play directed by Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic. It is contemporary political drama in the genre of David Hare who Sutton claims, understandably, to be influenced by. The play discusses the agonising issue of journalistic independence and integrity versus state imperiousness. Ben, the journalist, faces a US grand jury because he has refused to disclose his source for exposing the machinations of the Bush administration's warmongering, the breaches of the Geneva Conventions etc and is clearly inspired by e.g the Judith Miller case (the Valerie Plame case) It has echoes of McCarthy and of course we have faced the same sort of issue here viz the prosecution of the Guardian over Sarah Tisdall and more recently the Goodwin case. In the play, which features three characters Ben, Roger his attorney and Judy his wife, Ben agonises between maintaining his journalistic integrity and naming names to avoid a likely jail sentence which would destroy his marriage and family. The play (which has clever use of film shots of the interrogation in Court) ends with Ben's capitulation. It is left to the audience to moralise.