SOURCE: "Duty-Bound in Sparta," in The Times, London, 8 June 1995, p. 37.

In the review below, Nightingale praises Michael Boyd's 1995 staging of The Broken Heart, arguing that the di-rector made a taut production out of a generally diffuse play.

Many people know the story of the Spartan boy who let a fox gnaw at his stomach rather than reveal that he was surreptitiously holding it. In his Broken Heart, just transferred from Stratford's Swan to London's Pit, John Ford played subtler, more elaborate variations on the same legend. Several of his leading Spartans are putting a brave face on being devoured: but the creatures that are performing that job have taken up residence in their heads, hearts and bowels. Their foxes are inner, not outer, and, as the final body-count shows, more destructive than ever.

The plot is more diffuse than that of Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, and...