About the highest tribute I can pay N. F. Simpson's A Resounding Tinkle … is to say that it does not belong in the English theatrical tradition at all. It derives from the best Benchley lectures, the wildest Thurber cartoons, and the cream of the Goon Shows. It has some affinities with the early revues of Robert Dhéry and many more with the plays of M. Ionesco. In English drama it is, as far as I know, unique. It is also astonishly funny…. (p. 198)

To sustain anarchic humour for a full evening is among the hardest things a playwright can attempt. Once having espoused the illogical, the irrelevant, the surreal, he is committed: a single lapse into logic, relevance, or reality, and he is undone. A playwright of Mr. Simpson's kind comes defenceless to the theatre. He has voluntarily discarded most of the dramatist's N(orman) F(rederick...