Like Owners, Caryl Churchill's [Objections to Sex and Violence] carries a portmanteau title. It is a danger sign. Ownership is a fascinating and timely theme, opening up a perspective of multiple ironies on the possession of property and the possession of people. Likewise sex and violence…. But meanwhile, who are the people in the play and what happens to them?

To this question Miss Churchill returns a flimsy and long-winded answer. We are on a beach … where Jule, a taciturn urban terrorist, has retired with a boyfriend after being named in a conspiracy charge. What makes a nice girl start blowing people up? I imagine this question was on the author's mind at some stage of the play's composition; but we never find out. Nor do we discover why, having gone into hiding, Jule should have peppered her acquaintances with holiday postcards.

But however improbable their arrival, all...