A review by ianbanks
Plays 2: Fanshen / A Map of the World / Saigon / The Bay at Nice / The Secret Rapture by David Hare

4.0

The plays in this collection are better, technically, than in the first volume, despite a couple of them being contemporaneous to some entries in that collection. There was only one here that I didn’t enjoy - A Map Of The World - but that was simply because I didn’t believe it had enough plot to sustain a two-hour play, rather than it being badly written. I thoroughly enjoyed the others, especially The Secret Rapture, which could have been written today, but my enjoyment was sometimes tempered by the idea that a couple, of scenes could have been trimmed from one or two of the plays to make them tighter, but as they contained such wonderful character moments I was still happy to read them. To my mind the plays would have been tighter without them but also, possibly, less interesting.