Almost nothing about Shaffer's future could have been predicted from Five Finger Exercise, which derives much of its basic plot from Turgenev's A Month in the Country but remains much more pedestrian, with nothing like the same sensitivity to atmosphere or the same penetration below the surface of character, though the adolescent son, with whom Shaffer can empathize most easily, emerges in greater depth than the others. Still, it is an impressively solid piece of theatrical craftsmanship, with cleverly contrived tensions, plentiful opportunities for the actors to engage the audience's emotions and effective build-ups to slightly melodramatic climaxes….

The ambitious Royal Hunt of the Sun … was seriously overrated. Shaffer was trying to present the clash of two civilizations—the Incas and sixteenth-century Spain as represented by the Conquistadores. But the confrontation is mainly a verbal one between two men, Atahuallpa, the Sovereign Inca, and Pizarro, the conquistador who...