In Sore Throats, Howard Brenton has gone further than most of his contemporaries in exploring the intimate, bringing to bear on three fractured people in an unwelcoming South London flat, the social vision that sustains the broader, public canvas of his earlier work…. In the wake of divorce, Jack …, a chief inspector, has returned to see Judy … to claim half her money, and in so doing hits, kicks her and stamps on her head. Enter Sally … to look at the flat, knowing, because she works as a telephonist at the Evening Standard, that it is to be let. In Act 2, 18 months later, the two women are enjoying 'liberated' liberal sex with all-comers, especially 14-year-old-boys, and Jack returns again, this time from Canada, without having fulfilled his ambition to become a Mountie: his humiliation is rounded off with the closing declaration from Judy of her freedom from sexual and...