The play’s opening is a lot darker and more urgent than scenes that follow it: we watch young Mahmood incarcerated and ordered to pray. Edgar teases out our prejudices here: he urges us to believe this is some sort of extremist training, and it is only later we learn that Mahmood has been locked away to break his drug addiction. Unfortunately, the rest of the play is not nearly as uncomfortable or demanding as this sophisticated opening. The glimpses we get of the other citizenship students’ lives are weak and fleeting and we never quite get to grips with any of them. The students’ stories should form the backbone here - it is only when we start to engage with the details of their everyday lives, that we begin to confront the complexities implicit in cultural integration. Unfortunately the students’ lives are an afterthought, with both playwright and company sacrificing the real stories for pseudo-intellectual debate.

Nevertheless, Out of Joint does its best to brighten up and tighten up this well-meaning, wayward piece. Dunster floods the stage with theatrical tricks – some indulgent, others exceptionally effective. It is the company’s ability to switch roles convincingly that often brings this piece to life. The actors take on the challenge with gusto and sensitivity and change race, age, language in an instant; that a headscarf can transform a middle-class British woman into a convincing Ukrainian Orthodox somehow says a lot. It is the visual moments that stand out here, rather than the staid and frequently self-important dialogue. So whilst I will remember the speech given against the backstage screens swarming with the Paris protests, it is the images I’ll take away rather than the words accompanying them. And whilst devout Muslim student Nasim (played with real presence by Sirine Saba) is given a number of angry and affecting speeches, it was Saba’s smooth transition from Muslim to builder that really got me thinking.

Perhaps it is too soon to come to terms with the questions raised here, but credit to playwright and company for giving it a go. Testing the Echo is undoubtedly dry at points – more theory than practice – but is an important first step in a long and complicated debate. The different races and religions on display here are essentially mouthpieces: the next step is not just to observe the cultures we don’t fully understand, but to really let them live and breathe on-stage. In particular we should not be afraid to develop full and complicated Muslim characters, whom the audience is invited to judge in the same manner as anyone else. It is only when we are brave enough to explore both the good and bad in these characters that we will have really begun to integrate them both on-stage and off.