A "tender American hoodlum ..., like all the truly sweet ones, he writes the cruelest things there are." Thus Eugene Ionesco described playwright Israel Horovitz, who rose to prominence in 1968 with The Indian Wants the Bronx still perhaps his finest, tightest work, and with a series of short, metaphoric, urban comedies with a social message. Since then, Horovitz's plays have been translated into over twenty languages and performed all over the world, and he has consistently ranked as one of the most-produced playwrights in American colleges and universities. Horovitz's focus has undergone a change in recent years, but even his darkly psychological Wakefield cycle (a collection of seven plays) retains essential stylistic traits: a superb ear for dialogue, a central image (or metaphor), social consciousness, theatrical inventiveness, and a combination of farce and seriousness. If there is an overriding thematic focus in Horovitz's work, it would have to be...