Devil's Advocate

****

ANDREW BURNET

MANUEL Noriega of Panama was an archetypal puppet dictator. Recruited by the CIA in the 1960s, he attended military academy on a US scholarship, became Panama's chief of military intelligence and finally established himself as the country's de facto leader in 1983.

He worked closely with the US, facilitating its operations in Nicaragua and El Salvador, negotiating with Fidel Castro, helping control the Colombian drug trade and, of course, allowing access to the Panama Canal. But following the election of 1989 - which Noriega attempted but failed to rig - his relationship with Uncle Sam soured, and he was demonised in the US media.

Finally - in coda familiar to other tinpot generals - America invaded Panama in December 1989, killing thousands of civilians. Noriega sought refuge in the Vatican's Nunciature in Panama, which was soon surrounded by US troops, who used loud rock music as a weapon of psychological warfare.

It is here that Donald Freed's play takes up Noriega's story, focusing in on his negotiations with Archbishop José Laboa, the Basque-born Jesuit credited with persuading him to surrender. In this complex, slow-burning script, Noriega emerges not as an innocent, but as both idealist and pragmatist, a man who naïvely sought to free his country from US domination, was versed in Machiavelli and not above underhand tactics. Freed focuses on the ghastly torture and murder of guerrilla leader Hugo Spadafora as the darkest blot on Noriega's conscience.

But there are two protagonists in this play, and as these exhausted warhorses tussle, Laboa reveals his own moral blemishes - and those of the Vatican, an organisation too vast and powerful to avoid implication. Freed gradually exposes deep, uncomfortable truths from a tangle of accusation and counter-accusation, through the revelations of the two men. Confession - that cornerstone of Catholic observance - is the play's keynote.

This production by Dee Evans for the Mercury Theatre, Colchester would benefit greatly from a less shouty and confusing opening, when the audience is being asked to take in a lot of information.

But it soon finds its stride, and both Ignatius Anthony as Noriega and Peter Dineen as Laboa give terrific, weighty performances, vigorously conveying the play's intellectual and political muscle.

• Until 27 August. Today 12.10pm