Howard Brenton's new play The Genius will not offend the eye though it does abuse the ear. Trevor Eve, clenched fists by his side, clad in a black suit, and looking altogether like a statue of a Bulgarian hero, rants his way through the ungratifying role of Leo, an American Nobel Prize-winning mathematician who is mysteriously exiled to a Midlands university. 'A prickly little shit', the Vice-Chancellor … calls Leo, and takes the words right out of my mouth. Leo creates havoc, warping young minds, borrowing wives, serving urine at garden parties and involving both MI5 and the Kremlin in a tug-of-war for the formulae he's devised that are essential to building a new superbomb. Both play and actors lack conviction. Characterization lapses into caricature, and the issues raised by the play—the moral status of and responsibility for dangerous research, and the limits to which 'genius' is morally...