Unfortunately (and unjustly as well) the name of Christopher Fry has been linked with that nebulous monster, The Establishment. And since the mid-fifties responsible theatre in England, as elsewhere, has been out to get the Establishment. Fry, in my opinion, deserves more than a summary dismissal, a dismissal (for some) decided on by applying the criterion of guilt-by-association….

Christopher Fry has defined comedy as 'an escape, not from truth but from despair: a narrow escape into faith', a definition which suggests an attitude towards—rather than a solution for—the central paradox: the mystery of existence itself. And in Fry's plays the attitude of faith is always love—romantic love, brotherly love, love of God and the universe; but even in love (the acceptance of faith) spirit and flesh refuse to harmonize and the old battle continues. Fry's dramas usually end on this absurd note of discord, however...