“The national conversation in Britain these days seems to be taking place on stage: If these are great times for theater, they are grim times for reality, so you leave the theater both exhilarated and despairing. Play after play took up the same themes: the desperate economic underclass, the greedy upper class, dangerously disappointed immigrants, crumbling marriages, drugs, resentment of America, disaffection and decadence everywhere – what the English call, wryly and ironically, ‘happy families’.”