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Night and Day
This play is set in the fictitious African State of Kambawe, a former British Colony. The action moves from the bush, to the garden and living room of the Carson's home. The time is the present.
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
About the author
Tom Stoppard
159 books1,034 followersSir Tom Stoppard was a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.
Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright.
Stoppard's most prominent plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Night and Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia (1993), The Invention of Love (1997), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006) and Leopoldstadt (2020). He wrote the screenplays for Brazil (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Russia House (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Enigma (2001), and Anna Karenina (2012), as well as the HBO limited series Parade's End (2013). He directed the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), an adaptation of his own 1966 play, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the leads.
He has received numerous awards and honours including an Academy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and five Tony Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". It was announced in June 2019 that Stoppard had written a new play, Leopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna. The play premiered in January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre. The play went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and later the 2022 Tony Award for Best Play.
Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright.
Stoppard's most prominent plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Night and Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia (1993), The Invention of Love (1997), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006) and Leopoldstadt (2020). He wrote the screenplays for Brazil (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Russia House (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Enigma (2001), and Anna Karenina (2012), as well as the HBO limited series Parade's End (2013). He directed the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), an adaptation of his own 1966 play, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the leads.
He has received numerous awards and honours including an Academy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and five Tony Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". It was announced in June 2019 that Stoppard had written a new play, Leopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna. The play premiered in January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre. The play went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and later the 2022 Tony Award for Best Play.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
December 19, 2015
Too much politics. Too little humanness. Perhaps if I had seen the original production with Diana Rigg as Ruth Carson and John Thaw as Dick Wagner, I might have given it three stars.
October 26, 2009
The best play about journalism ever written. It examines the dichotomy between sensational and essential journalism through smart, witty, disturbing and profound discussions between journalists, a dictator and British ex-pats now living in an African country run by a dictator.
A group of journalists has arrived to cover a possible coup. One is an idealistic your reporter, another a jaded war correspondent, the third a photographer--who ends up providing the best insight into the core issues of journalism. They meet up with a British diplomat and is wife, the latter a jaded woman who has been a target of the worst of the British tabloid press.
A scathing indictment of the worst of journalism and defense of why a strong, independent press is critical for any free country.
A group of journalists has arrived to cover a possible coup. One is an idealistic your reporter, another a jaded war correspondent, the third a photographer--who ends up providing the best insight into the core issues of journalism. They meet up with a British diplomat and is wife, the latter a jaded woman who has been a target of the worst of the British tabloid press.
A scathing indictment of the worst of journalism and defense of why a strong, independent press is critical for any free country.
January 24, 2015
Review: The Real Thing, Night and Day, Travesties by Tom Stoppard
I recently hear a technically brilliant, world famous organist and composer play one of his more difficult works. As I expected, it was technically brilliant, and arid. It recalled many technically brilliant works for the piano written during, principally, the Romantic period: brilliant, but arid. Spoiler alert: if technical brilliance is your touchstone in valuing music and drama, skip this review.
“Henry : Or perhaps I’d realize where I’m standing. Or at least that I’m standing somewhere. There is, I suppose, a world of objects which have a certain form, like this coffee mug. I turn it, and it has no handle. I tilt it, and there is no cavity. But there is something real here which is always a mug with a handle. I suppose. But politics, justice, patriotism—they aren’t even like coffee mugs. There’s nothing real there separate from our perception of them. So if you try to change them as if there were something there to change, you’ll get frustrated, and frustration will finally make you violent. If you know this and proceed with humility, you may perhaps alter people’s perceptions so that they believe a little differently at that axis of behavior where we locate politics or justice; but if you don’t know this, then you’re acting on a mistake. Prejudice is the expression of a mistake.” (The Real Thing, p. 52.)
“Ruth: How strange. I had no idea that it was the millionaires who were threatening your freedom to report, Dick [addressed to Dick Wagner, a reporter]. I thought it was a millionaire who was picking up the bill for your freedom to report. In fact, I was discussing this very thing with somebody only yesterday—who could it have been?—oh, yes, it was Alastair [her eight year old son]….(She smiles broadly at Wagner.)
”Wagner: (Sarcastically) Alastair, was it?
“Ruth: ‘Alli,’ I said, ‘how are things in London with all those millionaires controlling your freedom to report?’ ‘I don’t think I quite follow you, Mummy,’ he said. ‘The whole country is littered with papers pushing every political line from anarchy to Zen.’ His theory—Alastair’s theory—is that it’s the very free-for-all which guarantees the freedom of each. ‘You see, Mummy,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to be a millionaire to contradict one. It isn’t the millionaires who are going to stop you, it the Wagners who don’t trust the public to choose the marked card.’ Do you think he’s got something, Dick?” (Night and Day, p. 83)
“ Carr: No, no, no, no, my dear girl—Marx got it wrong. He got it wrong for good reasons but he got it wrong just the same. And twice over. In the first place he was the victim of an historical accident, and in the second place his materialism made a monkey out of him, and of his theory---
“Cecily (coldly): Mr. Tzara, you are insulting me and my comrades---
“ Carr: —and especially of his comrades. The historical accident could have happened to anybody. By bad luck he encountered the capitalist system at its most deceptive period. The industrial revolution had crowded the people into slums and enslaved them in factories, but it had not yet begun to bring them the benefits of an industrialized society. Marx looked about him and saw that the system depended on a wretched army of wage slaves. He drew the lesson that the wealth of the capitalist was the counterpart to the poverty of the worker and had in fact been stolen from the worker in the form of unpaid labor. He thought that was how the whole thing worked. That false assumption was itself added to a false premise. This premise was that people were a sensational kind of material object and would behave predictably in a material world. Marx predicted that they would behave according to their class. But they didn’t. Deprived, self-interested, bitter or greedy as the case may be, they showed streaks of superior intelligence, superior strength, superior morality…[sic] Legislation, unions, share capital, consumer power—in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of reasons, the classes moved closer together instead of further apart. The critical moment never came. It receded. The tide must have turned about the time when Das Kapital after eighteen years of hard labour was finally coming off the press…” (Travesties, p.76 f)
This last, deeply flawed play has some of the best lines of the three:
“ Carr: To be an artist in Zurich, in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus.” (Travesties p. 38)
“Carr: …I had no idea that poets nowadays were interested in literature.” (p. 42)
“ Carr: Unrelieved truthfulness can give a young girl a reputation for insincerity. I have known plain girls with nothing to hide captivate the London season purely by discriminate mendacity.” (p. 43)
Yes, I remember when dramatic tension and poetic expression ceded to intellectual pretention in plays. The hint of a “new” idea, including the idea that one watching a drama should think, stimulated hosannas from critics. Dramas turned into scripted essays, and finally led to the absurdity of “dramas” like Waiting for Godot.
Mr. Graziano is the author of From the Cross to the Church: the Emergence of the Church from the Chaos of the Crucifixion.
I recently hear a technically brilliant, world famous organist and composer play one of his more difficult works. As I expected, it was technically brilliant, and arid. It recalled many technically brilliant works for the piano written during, principally, the Romantic period: brilliant, but arid. Spoiler alert: if technical brilliance is your touchstone in valuing music and drama, skip this review.
“Henry : Or perhaps I’d realize where I’m standing. Or at least that I’m standing somewhere. There is, I suppose, a world of objects which have a certain form, like this coffee mug. I turn it, and it has no handle. I tilt it, and there is no cavity. But there is something real here which is always a mug with a handle. I suppose. But politics, justice, patriotism—they aren’t even like coffee mugs. There’s nothing real there separate from our perception of them. So if you try to change them as if there were something there to change, you’ll get frustrated, and frustration will finally make you violent. If you know this and proceed with humility, you may perhaps alter people’s perceptions so that they believe a little differently at that axis of behavior where we locate politics or justice; but if you don’t know this, then you’re acting on a mistake. Prejudice is the expression of a mistake.” (The Real Thing, p. 52.)
“Ruth: How strange. I had no idea that it was the millionaires who were threatening your freedom to report, Dick [addressed to Dick Wagner, a reporter]. I thought it was a millionaire who was picking up the bill for your freedom to report. In fact, I was discussing this very thing with somebody only yesterday—who could it have been?—oh, yes, it was Alastair [her eight year old son]….(She smiles broadly at Wagner.)
”Wagner: (Sarcastically) Alastair, was it?
“Ruth: ‘Alli,’ I said, ‘how are things in London with all those millionaires controlling your freedom to report?’ ‘I don’t think I quite follow you, Mummy,’ he said. ‘The whole country is littered with papers pushing every political line from anarchy to Zen.’ His theory—Alastair’s theory—is that it’s the very free-for-all which guarantees the freedom of each. ‘You see, Mummy,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to be a millionaire to contradict one. It isn’t the millionaires who are going to stop you, it the Wagners who don’t trust the public to choose the marked card.’ Do you think he’s got something, Dick?” (Night and Day, p. 83)
“ Carr: No, no, no, no, my dear girl—Marx got it wrong. He got it wrong for good reasons but he got it wrong just the same. And twice over. In the first place he was the victim of an historical accident, and in the second place his materialism made a monkey out of him, and of his theory---
“Cecily (coldly): Mr. Tzara, you are insulting me and my comrades---
“ Carr: —and especially of his comrades. The historical accident could have happened to anybody. By bad luck he encountered the capitalist system at its most deceptive period. The industrial revolution had crowded the people into slums and enslaved them in factories, but it had not yet begun to bring them the benefits of an industrialized society. Marx looked about him and saw that the system depended on a wretched army of wage slaves. He drew the lesson that the wealth of the capitalist was the counterpart to the poverty of the worker and had in fact been stolen from the worker in the form of unpaid labor. He thought that was how the whole thing worked. That false assumption was itself added to a false premise. This premise was that people were a sensational kind of material object and would behave predictably in a material world. Marx predicted that they would behave according to their class. But they didn’t. Deprived, self-interested, bitter or greedy as the case may be, they showed streaks of superior intelligence, superior strength, superior morality…[sic] Legislation, unions, share capital, consumer power—in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of reasons, the classes moved closer together instead of further apart. The critical moment never came. It receded. The tide must have turned about the time when Das Kapital after eighteen years of hard labour was finally coming off the press…” (Travesties, p.76 f)
This last, deeply flawed play has some of the best lines of the three:
“ Carr: To be an artist in Zurich, in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus.” (Travesties p. 38)
“Carr: …I had no idea that poets nowadays were interested in literature.” (p. 42)
“ Carr: Unrelieved truthfulness can give a young girl a reputation for insincerity. I have known plain girls with nothing to hide captivate the London season purely by discriminate mendacity.” (p. 43)
Yes, I remember when dramatic tension and poetic expression ceded to intellectual pretention in plays. The hint of a “new” idea, including the idea that one watching a drama should think, stimulated hosannas from critics. Dramas turned into scripted essays, and finally led to the absurdity of “dramas” like Waiting for Godot.
Mr. Graziano is the author of From the Cross to the Church: the Emergence of the Church from the Chaos of the Crucifixion.
February 15, 2013
This was an unknown Stoppard play for me but certainly undeserving of that status. As usual, Stoppard is up to a great deal here, and to mostly successful effect. In this particular case, we are taken to a fictional African country to witness the intersection of post-colonial politics with both the practice and business of journalism. The dialogue is sharp throughout, and the entrance of the very slippery African "President" really ratchets things up nicely, but I'm not sure that everything ultimately coheres. The only female character in the play in particular remains something of a cipher.
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July 22, 2014Couldn't possibly rate this one as it was only about twenty pages towards the end I had any bloomin' idea what was going on. I think this is one a real slowpoke like me would have to see to properly understand.
One thing I did take away, however, was how much I recognised my own speech habits in Tom Stoppard's dialogue. By that I don't mean to imply I'm a profound intellectual like most of his characters, but rather my mind often works in allusions to song lyrics and random stuff like that that means absolutely nothing to anyone I'm talking to i.e, I'm irritating. So, you know, that was good to know.
One thing I did take away, however, was how much I recognised my own speech habits in Tom Stoppard's dialogue. By that I don't mean to imply I'm a profound intellectual like most of his characters, but rather my mind often works in allusions to song lyrics and random stuff like that that means absolutely nothing to anyone I'm talking to i.e, I'm irritating. So, you know, that was good to know.
April 2, 2016
Holy crap-snacks , Batman! A comedy in the same way Eugene O'Neils "The Iceman Cometh"is a comedy. Who the hell wrote the dust jacket description? Night and Day is an analysis of the freedom of press. Can it really mean anything pressed between business interests and a public hungry of shock value and scandal? The play could be called dispassionate but I think that Stoppard's point. The players are trying to remain outside a reality they are reporting and are blinded to the life and death struggle around them. They are in the middle of a war zone carrying on like they are watching a report on television.
June 12, 2015
A little scream about the business of international journalism, the warring cynics of the press, the qualified quantities of freedom of speech, and unfaithful wives in Africa. Stoppard peppers the dialog with some good zingers, but this is not a philosophical play like "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"; more like a one-room potboiler.
January 14, 2016
Not bad. Politics and journalism clash in a 1970s post-colonial Cold War setting in Africa. Excellent writing, entertaining, well-structured drama, but something was missing for me. I found the characters either trivial or reprehensible. In this, perhaps, they were a little too life-like. A worthwhile read for Stoppard fans, certainly, or theater students.
January 18, 2015
Incoherent, right wing, confused, and with a totally pointless female character. Stoppard plays should be witty arguments. This one is a series of half-arsed disconnected soliloquies, and it dies on the page. And joyless. Stoppard plays usually revel in their smartness, this one doesn't.
November 1, 2009
surely a good play about journalism. how it needs a lot of sacrifice from journalists and how crazy media can be. a woman's 'other' voice is voiced too here
March 16, 2014
I'm sure actually seeing Diana Rigg performing the lead role on stage would push it up to a 5. Or 10.
May 3, 2014
Arguably just a bit racist.
June 15, 2015
hmmmm
April 2, 2021
Not being a great theatre-goer, I would have been very upset if I’d paid good money to see this, unless I’d seen the original productions with John Thaw and Diana Rigg or Maggie Smith. It’s not that it’s bad or uninteresting, but that the dialogue was just too complicated for me to follow. Perhaps with a good performance I would pick up more, but while reading, I was struggling to follow the philosophising about journalism and freedom of the press.
Nevertheless, there were some good points made, there were some good jokes and interesting conversations. It seemed like he was trying to get a bit of everything into it. There’s some slapstick, hints that there could be a bedroom farce if there was more time and there was even room for tragedy, too. Why exactly an 8-year-old boy was required for five minutes, I’m not at all sure. It was also very interesting to read all the stage directions.
The best bit for me was the laugh-out-loud moment - due to the changes in the media since 1978 - when Ruth says, “The Flat Earth News is free to sell a million copies. What it lacks is the ability to find a million people with four pence and a conviction that the earth is flat.” How the world has changed!
Nevertheless, there were some good points made, there were some good jokes and interesting conversations. It seemed like he was trying to get a bit of everything into it. There’s some slapstick, hints that there could be a bedroom farce if there was more time and there was even room for tragedy, too. Why exactly an 8-year-old boy was required for five minutes, I’m not at all sure. It was also very interesting to read all the stage directions.
The best bit for me was the laugh-out-loud moment - due to the changes in the media since 1978 - when Ruth says, “The Flat Earth News is free to sell a million copies. What it lacks is the ability to find a million people with four pence and a conviction that the earth is flat.” How the world has changed!
October 18, 2022
Just because something is a book, is it fair to review it? How do you review a set of washing machine instructions? Unlike a lot of Stoppard I have never seen this performed and my impression is that he says some witty things about the role of journalists in society and that is about the lot. Taken as a text, I definitely enjoyed it less than, say, "The Real Thing" or "Arcadia" but maybe if I'd seen it I wouldn't take the same view.
February 12, 2019
I saw this play in San Francisco many years ago. It has stayed with me, probably not in the ways Tom Stoppard might imagine or wish his work to stay with one.
It is intense, fast-paced, razor-sharp, and, in the case of the production I saw, very well staged and well acted. Whenever I read this, I can see the play and hear the voices again.
It is intense, fast-paced, razor-sharp, and, in the case of the production I saw, very well staged and well acted. Whenever I read this, I can see the play and hear the voices again.
May 9, 2025
Another witty and entertaining play by Stoppard, this one exploring journalism in a ficticious African country in the middle of civil stife. Like Travesities, all of Stoppard's power over language is in full display, but the story never really rises to the grand levels of his best work. Still recommended for anyone who, like me, can endless enjoy Stoppard's wonderful writing.
6/10
6/10
December 19, 2018
Very intriguing work, as it is always the case by Tom Stoppard. The script is funny, outrageous, and serious all at the same time. More importantly, it is relevant. We can't help censoring ourselves, can we?
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April 6, 2021Very well written but I feel all of Stoppard’s work is a bit of a chore on the page, even if it is the best in performance. For that reason I’ve abandoned this for now even though it is objectively very good.
March 25, 2021
Glib treatment of African politics and the British press. Clever throughout, but a bit too brief--which I often say about plays I read. [edit]
January 5, 2023
Second play about journalism I've read recently. I can't say it's a topic that interests me much, but this play was okay. Not super funny for something billed as a comedy, though.
April 22, 2025
Language runs faster than political reality in another sparkling Stoppard setpiece.
December 31, 2022
is ostensibly about the press, which was a different beast in 1978 when this play was first performed, before blogs and a ubiquitous internet. At the same time, it is about post-colonial Africa, and it is about unionism, and these three themes are mingled with each other quite cleverly. Being a Stoppard work, it is replete with clever puns, word-plays and bons mots: “Most people call me Dick./ I’m not terribly fond of Dick./ You could have fooled me.” And there is the graffito: “Dick Wagner before he dicks you”. We are reminded of the curious argot of telegram-language. Wagner receives a telex reply from his paper to his protest that a non-union man was published: “upstick protest arsewards”.
These Stoppardisms maintain consistent levity throughout the play despite the serious matter of the themes.
The sub-themes relating to the press are about its freedom from censorship; its control by proprietors or by union leadership; whether the concept of press freedom is applicable to other cultures; whether salacious content (“Has anyone ever bothered to find out whether anybody really cares? ) is vindicated as a quid pro quo for the more serious content; whether reportage of wars is primarily about the reporter’s self-aggrandisement or about publicising truth; the contrasting importance of good luck and experienced professionalism in gaining “scoops”; and the intrusive foot-in-the-door style of journalism. (My mention of scoops reminds me that Milne bears some significant similarities to Evelyn Waugh’s William Boot in his novel, Scoop.)
The best lines, from the point of view of humour and from the point of view of incisive, challenging thought, come from the mining engineer’s predatory, promiscuous wife and from President Mageeba. Ruth Carson’s eight-year-old son is showing signs of being seduced by the world of reporters and press-photographers; she muses, “should I tell him it’ll send him blind, and risk psychological damage, or should I sew a war correspondent’s badge on his pyjamas and hope he grows out of it?… Well I’m going to need a sense of humour if Alistair is going to go around the house putting his foot in the doors and asking impertinent questions. Perhaps I’ll get him a reporter doll for Christmas. Wind it up and it gets it wrong.”
And Mageeba offers many trenchant observations: “I know the British press is very attached to the lobby system. It lets the journalists and the politicians feel proud of their traditional freedoms while giving the reader as much of the truth as they think is good for him.” “Our frontiers, you know, are still the frontiers of colonialism. Adoma has its own language, an ancient culture, and the people are of distinct appearance. This does not mean that Adoma could prosper as an independent nation – frankly it could not, except as the hand-maiden of its so-called liberators”. Asked whether he would seek US or British assistance if a war were to eventuate, his response is: “I’d be a fool to do that. Your record of cowardice in Africa stretches from Angola to Eritrea.”
Mageeba enjoys more than anyone his best line, “Do you know what I mean by a relatively free press, Mr Wagner?...I mean a free press which is edited by one of my relatives.”
The ingenuous Milne also offers a recondite observation on the unionism of the National Union of Journalists: “The fact is nobody’s going to be drummed out of the NUJ for professional incompetence – persistent inaccuracy or illiteracy or getting drunk at the Lord Mayor’s dinner. On the contrary it’s the union which is going to keep them in their jobs.”
Night & Day is a breezy play with a few underdeveloped surplus characters, such as Carson, but with a lively plot-line and with the insight to open a number of ideas worthy of consideration.
These Stoppardisms maintain consistent levity throughout the play despite the serious matter of the themes.
The sub-themes relating to the press are about its freedom from censorship; its control by proprietors or by union leadership; whether the concept of press freedom is applicable to other cultures; whether salacious content (“Has anyone ever bothered to find out whether anybody really cares? ) is vindicated as a quid pro quo for the more serious content; whether reportage of wars is primarily about the reporter’s self-aggrandisement or about publicising truth; the contrasting importance of good luck and experienced professionalism in gaining “scoops”; and the intrusive foot-in-the-door style of journalism. (My mention of scoops reminds me that Milne bears some significant similarities to Evelyn Waugh’s William Boot in his novel, Scoop.)
The best lines, from the point of view of humour and from the point of view of incisive, challenging thought, come from the mining engineer’s predatory, promiscuous wife and from President Mageeba. Ruth Carson’s eight-year-old son is showing signs of being seduced by the world of reporters and press-photographers; she muses, “should I tell him it’ll send him blind, and risk psychological damage, or should I sew a war correspondent’s badge on his pyjamas and hope he grows out of it?… Well I’m going to need a sense of humour if Alistair is going to go around the house putting his foot in the doors and asking impertinent questions. Perhaps I’ll get him a reporter doll for Christmas. Wind it up and it gets it wrong.”
And Mageeba offers many trenchant observations: “I know the British press is very attached to the lobby system. It lets the journalists and the politicians feel proud of their traditional freedoms while giving the reader as much of the truth as they think is good for him.” “Our frontiers, you know, are still the frontiers of colonialism. Adoma has its own language, an ancient culture, and the people are of distinct appearance. This does not mean that Adoma could prosper as an independent nation – frankly it could not, except as the hand-maiden of its so-called liberators”. Asked whether he would seek US or British assistance if a war were to eventuate, his response is: “I’d be a fool to do that. Your record of cowardice in Africa stretches from Angola to Eritrea.”
Mageeba enjoys more than anyone his best line, “Do you know what I mean by a relatively free press, Mr Wagner?...I mean a free press which is edited by one of my relatives.”
The ingenuous Milne also offers a recondite observation on the unionism of the National Union of Journalists: “The fact is nobody’s going to be drummed out of the NUJ for professional incompetence – persistent inaccuracy or illiteracy or getting drunk at the Lord Mayor’s dinner. On the contrary it’s the union which is going to keep them in their jobs.”
Night & Day is a breezy play with a few underdeveloped surplus characters, such as Carson, but with a lively plot-line and with the insight to open a number of ideas worthy of consideration.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews