SOURCE: Review of The Broken Heart, in Financial Times, 7 June 1995, p. 19.

In the following review, Murray commends Michael Boyd's production of The Broken Heart, asserting that "the serious work has all gone into the characters and the elaborate, darkly ironical verse which has to establish them and make the play. "

Seen last year at the RSC's Swan Theatre in Stratford. John Ford's The Broken Heart comes to the Barbican trailing gore and glory. Not that it is a play about war—on the contrary, its concerns are marital and familial; but its emotions are as grim and destructive as anywhere in Racine.

Ford's only half-familiar play is 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (which used never to be played on account of its title, but is nowadays played partly because of it); the National Theatre botched it a few years ago, with a puppy actor as the incestuously driven...