Mr. Hare is … dexterously talented. He skates with words, plays with metaphors and teases lilacs out of the dead land of an English society too long in transit. In short, he is clever. He is also a genuine playwright with more ideas than his thought can handle.

"Slag" is set in a private girls' school, those special and expensive torture camps happily endemic to England….

The girls' school in "Slag" is on the way down and will soon be on the way out. Mr. Hare postulates just three teachers and hardly any more pupils. By the end of the play, only this skeleton staff is left. The three young teachers try to make the best of things. The headmistress is determined to keep control of her staff, a young virgin devotee of Women's Lib who is a fervent proponent of self-assistance in sexual matters, and a lady who...