The play opens with some very tranquil singing and chanting.  It sets the scene, and quickly transports you from the hustle and bustle of bags and coats, to the silence and then the drama about to unfold before you.  The sounds are heavy yet enriching and gladly continue on throughout the play.

Next on stage is the playwright himself Michael Redhill played by Gordon Randwho is the narrator of the story and shifts in and out of time and character.  He starts off by explaining how he initially set out to write a play about Poland and the Holocaust, after a bitter divorce. Michael travelled to Poland to identify with loss of his family in the holocaust.  He then travels on to England where he finds an even more recent genocide.  But everything changes when he meets a man in a bar who thinks he knows a person who will answer his question “Why do good people, rush to do evil”

Along the way he meets the incredibly enigmatic Althea (Lili Francks & Tara Hughes) and she slowly unravels her own story, as she does Michael finds himself changing and growing, until his main aim is no longer to write her story but watch instead.

This play is about many things including genocide, a murder trial, ethnic cleansing, lying, and murder.  The titles itself suggest what people see in others, what many people aspire too and a quality that leans towards virtues.  This may be true, but the message is that goodness is far more complicated than that.  How do we measure goodness? On what terms, who do we believe and who do we trust.  Goodness at its cores explores what a moral action is.

Its other unique quality is making the viewer see characters as people, not as colours.  One of the ways this is achieved is by having names that could apply to different cultures, and having Althea played as black, but her younger self as white.

An incredibly powerful piece of theatre with first-rate acting.

Traverse Theatre (0131) 228 1404

Wed 16 Aug (1.45pm), Thu 17 Aug (4.15pm), Fri 18 Aug (6.45pm), Sat 19 Aug (9pm), Sun 20 aug (11.15am), Tue 22 Aug (1.45pm), Wed 23 Aug 4.15pm), Thu 24 Aug (6.45pm), Fri 25 Aug (9pm), Sat 26 Aug (11.15pm), Sun 27 Aug (1.30pm)

£12.50 (£9/unemployed £4.50)