David Rudkin

Colin and Anne are trying to conceive & endure all kinds of graphic and humiliating medical procedures and tests in that hope. Ultimately, they fail. Colin's end-of-the-play monologue describes how his Belfast friends and relatives have rejected him because he has rejected violence as a solution to the Troubles, although he admits that violence works. Anne describes a post-apocalyptic dream in which she and Colin die an unnatural death after the birth of an unnatural child. The play ends with the couple together, knowing that they will be childless and must look to another purpose. The problem with it is that their predicament is related to the world's predicament only at the end of the play, which comes across as heavy-handed. One attitude the play supports is that there is not homosexuality or heterosexuality but just sexuality, an attitude that resonates with me, and always has.… (more)