Ears on a Beatle, Greenside @ Infirmary Street, Edinburgh Fringe

The Beatle is John Lennon, the 'Ears' are the FBI, the time is the early seventies.  Now more than a decade old, Mark St Germain's drama uses contemporary news reports and publicly available FBI files to create the fictional relationship between two of the 'Feds'.

Howard is a Bureau lifer, an indurate cynic who will do what's necessary to defend the status quo and sees himself as a Bogart character.  Daniel is the youngster assigned to him to work as an undercover agent in the circles surrounding the rock star.  The action begins in 1971 when Nixon wants opposition to the Vietnam War minimised and hopes to have peace advocate Lennon deported, and moves through the decade, ending with the Beatle's murder in 1980.

While much of the story concerns the evolving relationship between the two men, their personal problems and attitudes to the 'subject' they are observing, underlying this are some serious and still relevant questions.  How do these agents retain an emotional distance from their targets?  Who watches the watchers, who controls their actions?  And why must they always be so paranoid and uncaring in their approach?  There are echoes of recent cases in the UK in which undercover policemen, infiltrating peace and environmentalist groups, have taken their role too far and caused damage to many in their wake.

There's an effective use of news bulletins between scenes to create the sense of time passing, but it helps to know something of the history of the period, and the significance of names like Nixon, Watergate, Carter.  The final scene, built around Lennon's death, feels too much like an add-on and the dialogue is stilted, but otherwise the play flows coherently and there are a surprising number of laughs pulled from the script.  Paul Broesmith is excellent as the older man, displaying a degree of human uncertainty under the hard boiled exterior.  Ben Adwick's Daniel comes across as too innocent to have been selected for a difficult undercover role and needs a bit more aggression in his nature.

It's a thought provoking hour that will stay with you for some time after, the flaws outweighed by the considerable strengths.  Well worth a look.

Ears on a Beatle is at Greenside @ Infirmary Street until 27 August.