Two English stage actors, Hugo and Jago, have an artistic difference while rehearsing a radio play. This evolves rapidly into a huge fracas, and spills onto a West End side street. Naturally, this draws a horde or passersby, including an American bystander, who elects to be the peacemaker. Things soon deteriorate from the scholarly to the brutal, even physical, and long held personal and societal prejudices surface. Class, racial origins, and history are harshly debated. Then Hugo, the posh one, proclaims his African ancestry, which bombshell causes a puzzled Jago to accost an African Traffic warden for verification, thus opening a third front to his quarrel with Hugo. There is a reversal of roles, with the posh Hugo championing liberal causes, the working class Jago becoming more and more entrenched as a xenophobe, and the traffic warden boasting an exemplary academic and social pedigree, despite his job. Unbeknownst to Jago, however, this entire `symposium` is meant either to be his...