Plays Of Near And Far

Sometimes one needs to indulge in the pastel whimsies of Dunsany. This mood overtakes me every so often. It happened recently, so I read this substantial book of his plays. I found each piece to be enchanting, humorous, witty at times, fairly clever and pleasingly ridiculous. The first and longest of the plays, entitled simply ''If'', is the best and the most inventive. It''s a time travel story that involves a wish and a chance to change one incident in the past and then endure all that follows from that change. It is also a story about travel to distant lands, to an implausible and theatrical Eastern kingdom in which the cliches of the Orient abound. It is also a story about change to one''s personality, and how a mild mannered English businessman can be turned into a despot under the influence of a certain kind of mischievous and capricious woman. The other plays in the book are briefer and lesser but still entertaining. There is a play that tells the annual story of the bees in heroic fantasy terms. There is a play about how Shakespeare would be ignored if he was alive in Dunsany''s era. There is a rather brilliant and prescient play about the dangers of processed food that is so cutting in its satire that it seems more like a work by Saki. Thinking about it more carefully, this latter play is probably the most important one in the book, and yet ''If'' will always be the one that is best remembered, for its beauty, its languor, cleverness and daftness.