Waste

Harley Granville Barker (1877-1946) was the most brilliant British director of the first quarter of the twentieth century. His best known plays, including Waste (banned by the Lord Chamberlain), were written as contributions to his Company's repertoire of provocative modern drama for a subsidised national theatre, a cause he championed in his book A National Theatre: Scheme and Estimates. Waste was first presented by the Stage Society in 1907, before being revised and produced at the Westminster Theatre in 1936. Other plays include The Madras House, first produced at Duke of York's Theatre, 1910; The Secret Life; and His Majesty, which received its first production at the Edinburgh International Festival by Orange Tree Theatre Company in 1992.

Written in 1907 and revised in 1926, it takes its time (just over three hours), but encompasses a vast amount: English smugness and hypocrisy, the intricacies of power and the danger of divorcing campaigning idealism from emotional fulfilment. Granville Barker's skill lies in his seamless blend of private and public life . . . You emerge wrung through from a play that is not only the source of much state-of-the-nation drama but also, I suspect, Granville Barker's own self-indictment.