His father's election team - an invisible but menacing presence on the floor above - thinks very differently and sends people in and out of John's room, including his mother and finally his father, to manipulate him into publicly apologising. The final crisis of the play begins when something worse emerges: someone has now posted video footage on the internet of something alcohol had wiped from John's memory of the party - the simulated gay sex act that "Muhammad" performed on "Pastor Bob".

It was very brave of Shinn, and intellectually honest, to write a play defending freedom of expression in such extreme circumstances. There could hardly be a harsher test case. It is more than likely that there would be international outrage and rioting, if the president's son were to insult the prophet so grossly in Muslim eyes, quite apart from the damage to America's standing in the world and of course to his father's brilliant career. Yet John's arguments are almost unanswerable.

What makes them particularly plausible is that John is not conventionally, thoughtlessly anti-Muslim - rather the reverse. He hates the war in Iraq, he passionately supports Palestinian rights. He is also cynical about American interventionism; his criticism of Islam is little different from his criticism of Christian fundamentalism. Yet he is quite clear. Early in the play, he explains to the nicest of the political aides that he totally agrees that "the Muslim world has grievances against the West that are valid - not just valid but correct, a lot of them... I'm just saying those grievances are not the whole story, Islam has hatred and intolerance in it that have nothing to do with Western oppression. It makes an apology a lot more complex because they can interpret my apology as an acknowledgement that their value system is legitimate - and if I submit to it then I am betraying all those who are oppressed by that system."