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For years I have been mercilessly lampooned by friends and acquaintances alike for my unorthodox lifestyle choice of having no TV. In an age of increasingly large flat-screens and surround sound which accost you the minute you walk into someone’s house, people regularly look at me like I’m either severely handicapped or chronically hard done by when I mention that I have no television. I can see the mixture of genuine pity, raw pathos and sheer disbelief in their faces as they stare at me open-mouthed. And no, contrary to the jokes and insinuations from the equally incredulous young people I mentor, it’s not because I can’t afford to pay the TV license. To be sure, television is a great invention, if handled in moderation. The composite etymological derivation (from the Greek and the Latin words—literally meaning "to see from afar") tells of a tremendous technological feat which certainly deserves to be applauded. What’s more, if one is discerning, it can be the source of some quality entertainment, instruction and enjoyment. Some of the nature documentaries and arts programmers on BBC 2 are truly fantastic. But the sad reality is that young people are rarely discerning and, by dint of poor time management skills, often end up wasting an inordinate amount of precious, never-returning time watching trash, their brains wallowing in a trough of mental lethargy. I can see the mixture of genuine pity, raw pathos and sheer disbelief in their faces as they stare at me open-mouthed. And no, contrary to the jokes and insinuations from the equally incredulous young people I mentor, it’s not because I can’t afford to pay the TV license.

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The line of demarcation between the adult and the child world is drawn in many ways. For instance, many American parents may be totally divorced from the church, or entertain grave doubts about the existence of God, but they send children to Sunday school and help them to pray. American parents struggle in a competitive world where sheer conning and falsehood are often rewarded and respected, but they feed their children with nursery tales in which the morally good is pitted against the bad, and in the end the good inevitably is successful and the bad inevitably punished. When American parents are in serious domestic trouble, they maintain a front of sweetness and light before their children. Even if American parents suffer a major business or personal catastrophe, they feel obliged to turn to their children and say, "Honey, everything is going to be all right." This American desire to keep the children’s world separate from that of the adult is exemplified also by the practice of delaying transmission of the news to children when their parents have been killed in an accident. Thus, in summary, American parents face a world of reality while many of their children live in a near-ideal unreal realm where the rules of the parental world do not apply, are watered down, or are even reversed. American parents struggle in a competitive world where sheer conning and falsehood are often rewarded and respected, but they feed their children with nursery tales in which the morally good is pitted against the bad, and in the end the good inevitably is successful and the bad inevitably punished.

So many of the productions currently to be seen on the London stage are concerned with the more violent aspects of life that it is surprising to meet a play about ordinary people caught up in ordinary events. Thomas Sackville’s the Visitor is just such a play—at least, on the surface. It seems to stand well outside the mainstream of recent British drama. In fact the surface is so bland that attention is constantly focused on the care with which the play has been put together, and the clarity with which its argument develops; it seems natural to discuss it in terms of the notion of "the well-wrought play". The story is about an unremarkable family evening in middle-class suburbia. The husband and wife have invited a friend to dinner. The friend turns up in due course and they talk about their respective lives and interests. During this conversation, in which the author shows a remarkable talent for writing dialogue which is entertaining and witty without being so sparkling as to draw too much attention to itself; the characters are carefully fleshed out and provided with a set of credible—if unremarkable—motives. Through innumerable delicate touches in the writing they emerge: pleasant, humorous, ordinary, and ineffectual. And if they are never made vibrantly alive in terms of the real world, one feels that this is deliberate; that the author is content to give them a theatrical existence of their own, and leave it at that. In fact the surface is so bland that attention is constantly focused on the care with which the play has been put together, and the clarity with which its argument develops; it seems natural to discuss it in terms of the notion of "the well-wrought play".

So many of the productions currently to be seen on the London stage are concerned with the more violent aspects of life that it is surprising to meet a play about ordinary people caught up in ordinary events. Thomas Sackville’s the Visitor is just such a play—at least, on the surface. It seems to stand well outside the mainstream of recent British drama. In fact the surface is so bland that attention is constantly focused on the care with which the play has been put together, and the clarity with which its argument develops; it seems natural to discuss it in terms of the notion of "the well-wrought play". The story is about an unremarkable family evening in middle-class suburbia. The husband and wife have invited a friend to dinner. The friend turns up in due course and they talk about their respective lives and interests. During this conversation, in which the author shows a remarkable talent for writing dialogue which is entertaining and witty without being so sparkling as to draw too much attention to itself; the characters are carefully fleshed out and provided with a set of credible—if unremarkable—motives. Through innumerable delicate touches in the writing they emerge: pleasant, humorous, ordinary, and ineffectual. And if they are never made vibrantly alive in terms of the real world, one feels that this is deliberate; that the author is content to give them a theatrical existence of their own, and leave it at that. During this conversation, in which the author shows a remarkable talent for writing dialogue which is entertaining and witty without being so sparkling as to draw too much attention to itself.

The line of demarcation between the adult and the child world is drawn in many ways. For instance, many American parents may be totally divorced from the church, or entertain grave doubts about the existence of God, but they send children to Sunday school and help them to pray. American parents struggle in a competitive world where sheer conning and falsehood are often rewarded and respected, but they feed their children with nursery tales in which the morally good is pitted against the bad, and in the end the good inevitably is successful and the bad inevitably punished. When American parents are in serious domestic trouble, they maintain a front of sweetness and light before their children. Even if American parents suffer a major business or personal catastrophe, they feel obliged to turn to their children and say, "Honey, everything is going to be all right." This American desire to keep the children’s world separate from that of the adult is exemplified also by the practice of delaying transmission of the news to children when their parents have been killed in an accident. Thus, in summary, American parents face a world of reality while many of their children live in a near-ideal unreal realm where the rules of the parental world do not apply, are watered down, or are even reversed. The line of demarcation between the adult and the child world is drawn in many ways.