The Knack provides a fascinating comparison with Play with a Tiger…. Both plays are written by women, both of whom can be described as 'new wave' dramatists; and both are about sexual callousness. Yet the two plays could hardly be more different. In Play with a Tiger Doris Lessing has a story to tell about one particular love affair and the pain of it. She wants to tell it naturalistically, but she also wants her play to have the clear markings of wider 'significance.'… We have to know the exact relationships between the minor and major characters—where did they meet, how long ago, why are they here now? We have to know in detail what is causing the representative noises in the street. Even the dramatic pool of orange light has to be explained (it comes from the street lamp shining through the window when the interior lights are off)….

Ann Jellicoe is a more instinctive playwright. In The Knack she also wants to write a play of general significance, but she decides for this reason to make its whole tone general, almost abstract. But since she doesn't want her play to seem arty or expressionistic—as it would if presented, say, on three stilted rostra of differing heights and one kidney-shaped podium—she, too, makes her naturalistic excuses. But she makes them briefly and economically at the very beginning of the play and then never needs to return to them. Her permanent setting is a bare room, with the walls and ceiling covered in light splurges of colour. The reason, we immediately learn, is that a charming young man, the tenant, is in the middle of painting himself some murals; and, since he likes space, he has moved everything into the passage except a bare metal bedstead and two chairs. We soon meet the two men he shares the house with, both of whom are obsessed by sex—one because he can never get too much (he needs it as other people need sleep, five hours a day), the other because he can't get any. Given this universal trio—supersex, sex and subsex—all we need now is a girl. One soon passes the window and, though a stranger, scrambles in. Thus, amusingly and most acceptably, Miss Jellicoe has provided herself with an abstract setting and with a cast of four which hasn't an ounce of overlap or wastage….

All the many relationship-games which develop out of the situation are extremely funny because Miss Jellicoe writes them brilliantly; but they are also very frightening, since one recognises consistently their reality in everyday life, their cruelty, their harm. Laughter surf-rides through the audience on the crest of a shudder, and Miss Jellicoe's harsh jeu d'esprit proves itself more true, more angry and more moving than all Miss Lessing's weightiness.

There are elements in the play which could be improved. Some of the arias of verbal ping-pong are too artificial, some of the set speeches too set; and it is a mistake to present Tolen as a jack-booted automaton just because he is a sexual Fascist—there are enough of them around to justify a more familiar presentation…. [But everyone] should see this play soon…. (p. 445)