A submerged but discernible element of autobiography runs through much of Ron Hutchinson's playwriting. This autobiographical dimension is apparent not so much in the specifics of his plays as in the overarching theme of much of his work, which concerns the relationship between England and Ireland, between the present and the past. To characterize him as an Irish playwright, or even as a playwright for whom Ireland is a key topic, is reductive; nonetheless, much of his best work has been written on this theme. His settings have included the dance-hall circuit of the London Irish Ceilidh band in Eejits (1978); a run-down Irish club in the English Midlands, which becomes the darkly comic battleground for age-old rivalries and hatreds in The Irish Play (1980); the inner-city bleakness of Coventry, recalled in the memories of a dying Irish youth in Risky City (1981); and a Paddington police cell in which a...