Peter Wood

"Much of the action takes place on an almost clinically bare stage, and the fear and violence in the usurping Duke's court, where everyone wears formal black Elizabethan dress, is chilling. With his lame eye and air of festering resentment, Sandy Neilson's Duke Frederick has a touch of the psychotic about him ... Boyd ... shows us the bloody reality of rural life as the shepherd Corin (excellent Geoffrey Freshwater) slowly skins and beheads a dead...

Depicts a day in the life of a family deteriorating from alcoholism, drug addiction, and imminent death. Ageing actor James Tyrone has abandoned all hope of being a great performer and has settled for being a hack. His bitter wife, Mary, has slipped into morphine addiction, while hie eldest son, Jamie, is a drunk. Jamie is envious of the writing talent of his younger brother, Edmund. These four haunted lives are about to clash.