In a short-lived curiosity from England—"Owners," by Caryl Churchill—we had on hand a promising dramatist…. The play is a farce about hatred, power, despair, baby-selling, arson, and murder (Joe Orton certainly released something in the British psyche) among some working-class people in a North London development. Marion, the despotic wife of a butcher, has very recently made a lot of money in real estate, and the story of her machinations and the anguish she causes those around her is told in a series of short scenes, almost like animated horror comics. The resultant confusion was not necessarily transatlantic, or necessarily a matter of direction; Miss Churchill is not a very firm or clear playwright. She is, however, occasionally clever, although she sounds as if she had learned about the lower orders entirely from old bound volumes of Punch; her characters talk like captions. (p. 56)

Edith Oliver...