Wonderful 1940's play about a middle-class father's defense of his boy, a very young military academy student, against the unthinking might of English military and judicial institutions. (I couldn't help but picture Rebecca Pidgeon as the sister - she was perfectly cast in David Mamet's movie version.) ( )

I read this first, on my own, not as an assignment, as a teenager. I think it was an old battered pupils edition of the play, from my parents bookshelves. Hard work, but an intriguing story even back then (I must have been 13 or 14).
I find that I did not understand very much back then. Back then, for me the story was about the boy, about the fight to find justice for him. Re-reading it now, I see that it is about everyone *but* the boy. There is the parents, specifically the father, putting everything (money, reputation, health) into the task of getting their boy exonerated from the accusation of being a thief. The siblings suffer for this, the older brother loses his place at Oxford because the parents cannot pay for it anymore, the older sister loses her fiancé due to the publicity. Even the barrister whose help they enlisted, gets himself deeply involved in a tangle of political mudfights, legal battles and last but not least his unacknowledged attraction to a lady. There is a number of subplots going on, and the end does not only see the boy exonerated but nicely ties a few of these subplots as well. There is an open ending that is just lovely and unexpected --or not, if you have been reading attentively!
There is a 1999 film version of this play by David Mamet, which is worth watching. ( )