Whereas the action of a representational or realist play is typically the product of careful dramatic construction involving motivations and conflict, Harold Pinter’s late play Ashes to Ashes assembles itself out of pure aporia and not knowing. The first lines of the play, for example, combine anxious questioning with slowly emergent knowledge about an event in the past:Well…for example…he would stand over me and clench his fist. And then he’d put his other hand on my neck and grip it and (...) bring my head towards him. His fist…grazed my mouth. And he’d say, “Kiss my fist.”And did you?Oh yes. I kissed his fist. The knuckles. And then he’d open his hand and give me the palm of his hand…to kiss…which I kissed.... (shrink)

Many who write about the playwright Maria Irene Fornes’s work comment with reverence about the experience of watching those productions she herself directed.1 Managing somehow to combine frank depictions of cruelty and violence with an odd, otherworldly charm, Fornes’s direction conveyed a distinct sui generis quality that has deflected analytic scrutiny—the exterior operates in such an exquisite fashion one hesitates to lift the hood and look beneath. The set is a wooden room which sits on an earth promontory. The promontory (...) is five feet high and covers the same periphery as the room. The wood has the color and texture of bone that has dried in the sun. It is ashen and cold. In Mud’s opening notes.. (shrink)