Play enjoyed

Despite the reservation expressed at the beginning of this review. I enjoyed the Fry play. As the programme introduction quite acutely hints it is the more solid grounding in character that has made this play last better than perhaps any other of Fry's. Even here, though, the wit, at first amusing, begins to pall. Ingenious metaphor, at first impressive 'one eagerly, in the first flush of enthusiasm, searches for comparison . . . Jonson?), at length becomes mechanical, merely (not always impeccable) virtuosity. One realises that the massive figure of Jonson has nothing to do with it at all.