Only Free Men - Lewes Little Theatre

When Lewes based writer V.R Morse pitched his latest play to Lewes Little Theatre, he described it as 'extremely uncomfortable and unsettling'. He was prepared for them to turn it down. They didn't. Instead, the director of Lewes Theatre Club, Victoria Thompson, championed 'Only Free Men' and fought a little internal opposition to push it through. When I speak to him on Tuesday morning, there are only ten tickets left. If ticket sales can be seen to be an indication of a particular appetite, then there seems to be one in Lewes for challenging drama. I ask Morse whether theatre ought to be political, and what it is about the form that can make a point more powerfully than other media. 'Other media don't ask you to give up two hours of your life', he tells me, 'and in a performance area you are close to the people, so there is no protection. Staging it in the studio theatre enabled us to emphasise that feeling.'

With themes such as the future of freedom of speech laws, 'security' and the internment of terrorist suspects, the play is clearly rooted in the contemporary political landscape. The paired-down casting features just three characters for most of the play, an American and an English Interrogator and a British born terrorist. 'I wanted to distil current events into a dramatically convincing form', Morse tells me, 'but avoid making it one-sided propaganda. I wanted people to imagine empathetically opposed points of view, in a way that is constantly shifting throughout the play.' ER