'AM I writing the tale, or is it writing me?" murmurs Ibn Al-Muqaffa, as he is dragged into a maelstrom of intrigue and sectarian violence engulfing eighth-century Iraq. The play unfolds in Basra, where Al-Muqaffa (Neil Edmond) a Persian man of letters is translating a series of discourses disguised as animal fables, Kalila Wa Dimna, revered to this day in Indian, Arab and Persian cultures.

Written and directed by the Kuwaiti Sulayman Al-Bassam, the play is a war of wits between Al-Muqaffa and those who wish to harness scholarly wisdom to their military might, particularly the megalomaniac Al-Mansour (Simon Kane), who sweeps away the village of Baghdad to build a new capital. Al-Muqaffa, constantly reminded of his outsider status as both a Persian and a convert to Islam, is unable to alter men's minds as he hopes, and ends his days mutilated as well as marginalised, as anarchy grips the country.

It sounds chillingly up-to-date, but playwright Al-Bassam is wise not to labour the point. This Sulayman Al-Bassam Theatre production would have been a patronising outing were the characters brandishing Kalashnikovs. It is rather neutral in setting, with the cast mostly in tunics and leggings.

Al-Bassam describes his work as Shakespearean in style, and certainly it was easy to draw parallels with King Lear, Hamlet and Macbeth: gougings, estranged relatives, bloody hands, reason in madness. But even with the notes (which caution that the events portrayed are "by no means a historical document"), The Mirror for Princes is a bewildering experience.

At the interval, during the production's opening night on Tuesday, I heard more than one person mutter they had little idea of what was going on, and several seats were empty during the second half, in which the humans started to display bestial tendencies, howling and hissing as their enmity grew more visceral.

For a start, it is a multimedia event characters scribble on screens to explain the plot; video footage and stabs of music punctuate the action, and eerie shapes flicker in the background. Not all of this was successful the occasional surtitles were far too small to be read without squinting, for example. However, it is a sobering, but nonetheless witty and entertaining, portrayal of how quickly idealism degenerates and power corrupts.

The Mirror for Princes is at the Playhouse until tomorrow.