Frank McGuinness is one of the leading Irish dramatists of his generation. His work reflects an Ireland that evolved in the 1980s, a decade in that country when, in the words of Fintan O'Toole, "impermanence became absolute, when the attempt to construct a realm of symbols and images and values that would be unchanging came into ever sharper conflict with a shifting, divided and contradictory reality." McGuinness takes the self-doubt that informed cultural debate in the 1960s and 1970s--the "I don't know, I-I-I don't know" that closes Brian Friel's Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964)--and edges it toward a harder, broader perspective that interfaces history with the present, the positive with the negative, and society with the personal. McGuinness acknowledges--almost celebrates--conflict in his society, forcing the realization that harmony, peace, and stability can never precede the acceptance and, ultimately, the celebration of difference. Eamonn Jordan chose the title of...