Theater: The Audience as Victim

A SENSE OF DETACHMENT by JOHN OSBORNE

First comes fury (Look Back in Anger) and then mordant self-pity (In admissible Evidence). If these assaults on man's conscience do not take effect, what is left but to call it quits? That is not precisely what Playwright John Osborne has done in his new London play A Sense of Detachment (his kind never quits). It is only that, having failed with passion and rational argument to persuade us to open our eyes and ears and hearts, Osborne now resorts to the figurative pig bladder and...