John B. Keane is a regional dramatist. He writes of the people and culture of County Kerry, an area of Ireland which both John Millington Synge and Brendan Behan admired as possessing imaginative richness but which Keane, as a native, is able to study more intimately. His earliest plays seem to come from another era, having a haunting sense of remoteness and even barbarity in their tales of mountain folk, matchmakers, and lonely farm people. Their power stems mainly from the characterization, which may strike modern urban audiences as exotic or melodramatic but which is true to the colorful locale of the plays. The language is a second reason for Keane's power and popularity. While he does not rival Synge for beauty of phrasing, he is a true son of George Fitzmaurice (also a Kerry dramatist) inasmuch as he uses a racy, idiomatic speech, at times highly lyrical...