Nick Darke has accumulated an impressive list of production credits on stage as well as on television and radio. He has gained only marginal attention, however, from those who document recent developments in contemporary theater and has frequently earned the ire of theater critics not only for his chameleon-like shifts between and within genres but also for the politics of his work. Darke has been accused of both delivering propaganda and of presenting a rather naive and generalized socialism in his work.

Unlike the heavyweight playwrights of British political theater such as David Hare, David Edgar, Howard Brenton, and Edward Bond, who are credited with analyzing the political health of Britain in the wake of the rise of Thatcherism, Darke is less concerned with the state of the nation than with the state of the small community, whether that community is Cornish tin miners or Nicaraguan freedom fighters...