'And this is what the product is all about,' declares [John Garrard] at the end of Make and Break, swinging round the final section of his firm's wall system and revealing a corpse on the other side.

Death stalks Frayn's characters as they play out their good commercial roles against a lurid trade-fair background, punctuated by the faint menace of exploding terrorist bombs 'out there' in the city of Frankfurt…. At the centre of the frenzy is the managing director, John Garrard …, who unlike the rest of his staff, cannot shed his professional identity and the accompanying turn of mind, even for a moment. This is a brain attempting to work like a computer: absorb maximum data, process, place in order of priority, issue programme of action. He questions his staff about their private lives (on the principle that if a man has two heads, why talk to only one), their religious views and their artistic preferences with the same allconsuming efficiency he applies to his business proper. Presumably he does the same to his wife, children, as they have all gone into headlong flight out of his life. The seduction of his partner's secretary … is carried out with an efficiency that is part idle curiosity and part single-mindedness (it certainly isn't rapacious lust), and culminates in a masterly piece of expressionistic theatre. (pp. 23-4)

[The secretary's] speech on the humble, moment-by-moment goals and pleasures of a lonely, underfilled life confirms the atmosphere of blighted quality that gives the play its power to move. Behind a depressing world of rapid satisfactions, the consolations of giant stuffed teddy bears and slick professionalism only just hold back the tide which threatens to engulf its ordered existence….

Meanwhile, religion hovers everywhere, providing a counterpoint to the smash and grab ethos, but very little salvation. The youngest member of the sales team is a sweaty-palmed, born-again Christian, an attribute compatible with eager-beaver junior salesman role…. The secretary's interest in Buddhism is treated, though at greater length, with the same commodity-orientated attitude by Garrard. One gets the impression that Frayn might just be proposing the Four Noble Truths as a serious contender for getting these beleaguered human beings off their karmic wheels. On the other hand, they and other Buddhist principles are rattled off with the same ludicrous vacuity as the varieties of wood available for the wall-systems. I could not help feeling once again that Frayn should check his 'how to make anything seem ridiculous in three easy sentences' ability a little more than he does. Too many easy laughs put the drive of this type of play at risk, whilst at times unbalancing the tone beyond the point of credibility…. This may account for any longeurs in Make and Break.

Similar difficulties beset the character of Tom Olley…, Garrard's experienced but sympathetic Catholic second-in-command, who wields almost all the moral clout of the play, providing a foil to the emotional wasteland which Garrard has subjugated to his commercially utilitarian ethic…. These two men are supposed to be very close, yet over-emphatic characterisation gives rise to doubts about the credibility of the relationship. (p. 24)