SOURCE: Harley, Kevin. “Carry On Screaming.” New Statesman and Society 9, no. 395 (22 March 1996): 38.

In the following review, Harley characterizes Incarnations as “hasty sketches … for completists only.”

Clive Barker is an erratic talent. He has produced work that has redefined the horror genre (Books of Blood, Hellraiser) but also some of fantasy's most ponderous turkeys. For the most part, Incarnations veers towards the latter. These three plays were written before the Books of Blood: the earliest, History of the Devil, puts an unrepentant Lucifer on trial. This Devil is a construction, with no substance other than what history has projected on to him. He's an actor doing as directed, in keeping with Barker's declared theme: incarnation, or “being made flesh”.

Barker is interested both in the skins people put on and in stripping them—and their situations—of those skins. Colossus is set in a huge house stripped bare by...