SOURCE: “Three Farceurs: Alan Ayckbourn, David Gregan, Simon Gray,” in The Second Wave: British Drama for the Seventies, Hill and Wang, 1971, pp. 155-71.

In the following excerpt, Taylor examines the works of Ayckbourn, David Cregan, and Simon Gray—playwrights who, in Taylor's opinion, are re-examining traditional theatrical genres.

We tend to expect plays by new writers to be in some sense avant-garde, and the newer the writer the more avant-garde the play. We even sometimes seem to suggest that it is the young writer's duty to be avant-garde, and chastise him if he is falling short of this ideal by writing straightforward, old-fashioned sorts of plays. But of course, there is no necessary connection between youth and deliberate modernity. Indeed, one of the salient characteristics of the newer British drama has been exploration of a different sort: the re-examination and revivification of forms of the past, reclaiming for...