Why is David Rudkin's Ashes … a sad, but not a tragic, play? What dimension does it lack? The brief reply, a kind of energy, begs more questions than it tentatively attempts to answer, for Rudkin's play bears all the signs of honest effort, which is energy of a kind. Its theme is as fundamental as that of Lorca's Yerma, which it resembles: childlessness, but seen from the angle of a couple, not just from a wife's….

There is so much to respect about Ashes (not least, Rudkin's ambitiousness) that it goes against the grain to record that … [it] is a dreary, self-absorbed play. Rudkin has given himself a situation which he has not managed to develop into a story. From the tone of the opening scenes, we know that Anne and Colin will not have a child. Even when the urine tests prove positive (to the strains of...