Leonard is by no means a bad writer, but he seems very uncomfortably cast in his current role of Ireland's greatest living playwright. He persistently, and one would say deliberately, resists the temptation to write great plays. Instead, he is essentially a miniaturist, interested in the little, ordinary lives of little, ordinary people. And sometimes they are just that little bit too little, too ordinary, to sustain interest in the theatre…. A Life potters through an evening with Drumm, the town crosspatch … while, brought up short by a brush with the idea of imminent death, he looks on his life and asks himself and us what it has all amounted to. The answer, unfortunately, is not very much: not enough, anyway, to keep the attention from constantly wandering while we hear about his unsuccessful courtship of the local good-time-girl … and his traumatic participation in a local debate, more than forty years ago, when the lads laughed and catcalled and he determined to settle into his hard shell of self-satisfaction and superiority to the human weaknesses (and strengths) of his acquaintances. What Mr. Leonard never quite comes up with is any reason that we should find this character any less boring and tiresome than everyone else around (except maybe his featherbrained wife) seems to. By the time he experiences his epiphany—if he ever does—it is hard to summon up even enough energy to get up out of one's seat and trudge off home. (pp. 40-1)