Mr. N. F. Simpson in [A Resounding Tinkle and The Hole] triumphantly demonstrates that it is possible to combine UNESCO and Ionesco, and juggle hilariously with hand grenades. In A Resounding Tinkle a prematurely middle-aged young couple tick away in their stuffy living-room isolated from each other like Victorian clocks under glass. For all they know their villa might be outside the gate of Belsen, inside the gate at Aldermaston, or on the slopes of Etna. Embalmed in habit, they interweave their wildly surrealist monologues as though they were the platitudes of Mrs. Dale's Diary. They bicker passionlessly about the right name for their elephant. The husband answers a knock at the door and discovers a man who wants him to form a Government. ('That's the Prime Minister's job,' complains the husband mildly. 'Anyway we don't know anybody.') A pretty relative drops in and livens up...