When the Royal Court Theatre in London programmed Jim Cartwright's Hard Fruit for its first production of the 2000-2001 season at its newly refurbished Sloane Square venue, the choice proved Cartwright's rising status in contemporary British theater. Acclaimed by the Royal Court's artistic director, Ian Rickson, as "easily his best play since Road, " Hard Fruit explores a "hidden world of chest-expanding, middle-aged men who . . . would never have called themselves gay but who have homosexual experiences." The play serves as further confirmation of Cartwright's ability to probe the sociocultural landcapes of Northern England, forging dramatic works that, while rooted in the region's urban environment, can never be simply reduced to that milieu. From the blistering dissection of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's England rendered in Road (1986)--perhaps the key play of the 1980s in its willingness to move beyond the small-cast, interior-set dramas that dominated the new writing scene at...