Unfortunately (and unjustly as well) the name of Christopher Fry has been linked with that nebulous monster, The Establishment. And since the mid-fifties responsible theatre in England, as elsewhere, has been out to get the Establishment. Fry, in my opinion, deserves more than a summary dismissal, a dismissal (for some) decided on by applying the criterion of guilt-by-association….
Christopher Fry has defined comedy as 'an escape, not from truth but from despair: a narrow escape into faith', a definition which suggests an attitude towards—rather than a solution for—the central paradox: the mystery of existence itself. And in Fry's plays the attitude of faith is always love—romantic love, brotherly love, love of God and the universe; but even in love (the acceptance of faith) spirit and flesh refuse to harmonize and the old battle continues. Fry's dramas usually end on this absurd note of discord, however muted.
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