That [The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold] ultimately fails as a play is in no way a fault of any performance nor of … [the] direction. Nor can all the blame be laid at the door of Ronald Harwood who adapted Waugh's penultimate novel, though Harwood is open to criticism both in the manner of his adapting and for failing to recognise the sharply confining limitations of his source. Waugh himself is the culprit, both as a novelist and a scenarist, for although he had lost none of his adeptness as a prose stylist and story-teller, Waugh as usual projected himself in lightly disguised form to the centre of his novel…. But unlike his previous novels, where the Waugh personae are a part of a variegated bustle, Waugh as Pinfold is solitary star, almost the sole performer…. The 'real' characters of Pinfold are as shadowy and intangible as the hallucinations...