Howard Barker: Modern Allegorist

Howard Barker is one of that notable generation of leftist writers including Howard Brenton and David Hare, whose work first carne to prominence in Britain in the nineteen-seventies. Inevitably, he became known by association as a political dramatist and his own stated leftism in political attitude has tended to reinforce this description. Yet the broad application of the term "political" conceals the nature of the highly individual work of a dramatist whose plays, notably in his later period, have been visionary in concept, often surrealist in manner, and so frequently bewildering to the critics as to demand analysis and definition.