The unsuccessful work of a gifted and pungent playwright, [Fen] is eminently watchable, full of sharp, stinging, tragicomic moments that, however, refuse to coalesce. Shapeliness, to be sure, is seldom what Miss Churchill is after; topsy-turvy jaggedness and intricately lacerating jests are her game. But however you go about it, impact is needed—particularly when political agitation for socialism is the purpose. Yet Fen, which examines the lives of a score of women and couple of men in East Anglia's fen, or marsh, country, dilutes its effect doubly: by trying to do too much and do it with far too little.

Five actresses and one actor … portray here, as it were, the entire population of a hamlet: the toilers on the earth, the harsh overseers who are themselves exploited, even the ultimate overlord from a Japanese conglomerate. But the subject seems more suited to a semi-documentary film: There...