NOVELIST Martin Amis was recently asked in a television interview to comment on London as an example of a multicultural city. He corrected his questioner by pointing out that it was actually a multiracial city. While this might have come across as semantic point-scoring, the difference between the two is vast.

NOVELIST Martin Amis was recently asked in a television interview to comment on London as an example of a multicultural city. He corrected his questioner by pointing out that it was actually a multiracial city. While this might have come across as semantic point-scoring, the difference between the two is vast.

In David Edgar's new play for Out Of Joint what it means to be British is examined through the experiences of 21st-century immigrants taking the citizenship test that legitimises their naturalisation into little Britain. In a dense collage of reportage, facts and figures, a series of mini narratives weaves in and out of view. Central to this is the white, middle-class teacher of citizenship to a classroom made up of pupils from Somalia, Serbia, the Congo, India and Egypt. It's here the voguish buzz-words of "diversity" are introduced in a set-up that can't help but look like a more politically-inquiring version of politically incorrect 1970s sit-com, Mind Your Language.

Matthew Dunster's production is initially a dizzying polemic of information overload, in which eight actors play out a multitude of roles to the extent that it's hard to grab hold of anything resembling empathy. Beyond questions of cultural imperialism, it's telling that Edgar, himself a western intellectual, can't help but fall back on the uprisings of 1968 Paris to illustrate what might be a similar flashpoint for today's frustrated would-be freedom fighters. While you can see his point, the play over-eggs things in a melting-pot of ideas that never quite make themselves clear.