Marital Infidelity and Its Consequences
Banal though his mid-life crisis plot of marital infidelity may seem, Peter Nichols places still another version of what he has called the “genetic family trap” under the unblinking, microscopic eye of a steady observer of human passions to produce the kind of detailed texture found in the works of Gustave Flaubert, August Strindberg, Émile Zola, and Leo Tolstoy, all of whom examined marital infidelities and their destructive consequences.
Stripping Away of Illusions
In Passion Play, Nichols continues his stripping away of illusions from reality, a theme that is at the core of all of his plays. Here, however, his comic wit takes a more somber tone, and the ironies as they multiply become darker than in the earlier dramas.
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