Hugh Leonards play, Da, currently running at the Abbey, opens with an episode which is conducted without words. The central character, Charlie, is burning his father's papers and other rubbish in the cottage in Dalkey, having just come back from the funeral. He botches the job, through indecision, interruption, uncertainty; and out of that emerges the play. But just for those opening moments we witness, in dumb show, one of the cruellest and most painful occasions in life, the reading and the shredding of the evidence in a case that has finally been closed.

ONCE UPON A TIME there were flowers in fields and gardens, and trees and landscapes, and men and young girls sat on the ground underneath the trees and laughed, and made love. And where the land went into the sea waves broke upon the shore, and children played in the sand, and men and women walked along the beach. And the sun shone down on it all, and the wind blew, and clouds moved across the sky, and the leaves twisted and the trees swayed, and the surface of the water was troubled. By Bruce Arnold