If Peter Barnes's screen, radio, and television plays are included alongside his work for the theater, he is one of the most prolific British dramatists of the second half of the twentieth century. He shared (with Edward Bond) the John Whiting Award for his play The Ruling Class (1968); in 1969 he received the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising Playwright of the Year; his Red Noses (1985) won the 1985 Olivier Award for the Best Drama of the Year; and his 1991 screenplay Enchanted April was nominated for an Academy Award. Barnes inspires remarkable loyalty from many of the actors who work with him. English actors, in particular, are said to relish psychologized characterization; but whatever else Barnes does with such panache, his characterizations are neither psychologized nor naturalistic. In fact, he has described (in his introduction to Plays: One) his own theater writing as "repeated bayonet attacks on naturalism. . . ." What seems...