Big issues, dated discussion: The Black Album at the National Theatre's Cottesloe * * *

Hanif Kureishi's half-literary, half-populist novel is let down by an all-simple play that takes a Boy's First Book of Fundamentalism approach.

Energetic staging, a believably naive central performance from Jonathan Bonnici and a long list of ‘issue’ boxes ticked by the script fail to conceal that the story needed major updating for today's increasingly minority- and more specifically, islam-savvy audience.

The story shows how when smart but impressionable Shahid moves to London to study, his encounter with a group of wannabe vigilantes causes him to question his beliefs.

Kureishi's contribution to the literary canon in discussing issues of race, discrimination and radicalisation has been remarkable for how ahead of the curve it has been, with The Black Album published some 14 years ago, in 1995.

He was picking up on the spreading undercurrent of radical ill will that was being fostered by a largely white, western apathy about the outside world; something no other writer saw with such clarity, and which was to reach that terrible climax in New York six years later.

It is a pity that this adaptation does its best to make its audience forget that far-sightedeness.

What has happened since 9/11 is that the discussion of ethnic and religious marginalisation has moved on beyond the Satanic Verses controversy of the late 80's, as Western culture has made a real attempt to understand those distant others.

As I watched, I found myself wondering how much better the night might have been had Kureishi chosen to write a stage adaptation of his short story My Son the Fanatic. But perhaps the excellent 1997 film adaptation left Kureishi's plans for that story sated.

The key weakness of this staging is that it fails to show how people can actually make that final step to fanaticism, with faltering student Shahid's final choice never really in doubt, even from the beginning of the play.

This is something that Fanatic, especially in its film incarnation, brought out wonderfully well: with the troubles of the father and racism against the son screening and fomenting the son's waywardness.

Fanatic also ages much better, because rather than being driven by external, real world events like The Black Album, it is led by the delicate balance of relationships between characters as they test each other's boundaries. Simply, it is less of an ‘issue’ play.

The TARA theatre company's production at the National can however take pride in certain minor successes. The staging is visually striking in a way designed to appeal to the young, and several titters and gasps of surprise proved that this worked.

One marvellously filmic scene saw Bonnici saying his lines in time to a projected image of the text he was ‘typing’ onto a keyboard, the words extending slowly from wall to wall of the stage set in glorious green type.

The visual surprise that concludes the play also makes quite an impact, causing the odd jaw to drop in a way that must satisfy director Jatinder Verma.

But for those who go to the theatre wanting more than an introduction to the issues, such small pleasures only remind that the goalpoasts have moved and this play has no new answers to the old questions.

So why the third star? Because the play never has a dull moment, and more importantly, these subjects should be on the stage right now.

Young teens should by all means see this film: it will teach them a lot about the world. But older theatregoers, particularly those who lived though the Rushdie controversy, will not find enough new here.

Unfortunately, in the stage version of The Black Album, the audience never has the chance to engage at a deeper level, because the novel's detail has been stripped out, leaving a cacophony of ‘issues’, each muffling the last before it has had a chance to echo.