SOURCE: Crane, Richard. “A Young People's Revolution.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4568 (19 October 1990): 1129.

In the following mixed review of Mad Forest, Crane compliments Churchill's imagery and control yet contends that key information is missing from the play.

The subject of Mad Forest is the Romanian revolution of last December, the build-up to it and its continuing aftermath, as experienced by ordinary people. Caryl Churchill, Mark Wing-Davey and the cast of students from the Central School of Speech and Drama had been to Romania to glean at first hand, not the front-line heroics and power struggles as seen on television, but the little comedies, tragedies, absurdities, legends, songs and jokes that were the flotsam on the tidal wave.

The play is in three parts: before, during and after. In the first act, we are shown a society forced to sleep-walk through years of darkness and queues. There is no detectable...