A social satire used as a tool to proclaim the author's philosophical stance on marriage and divorce. While some of the situations will seem amusingly dated today, when many of the customs he savages are no longer in common practice, the conversation surrounding the idea of marriage and the government's proper role could not be more timely. The play suffers from a bit of dragginess at the beginning, with the characters spending most of their time in philosophical discussion; I don't mind this in plays, but I am aware that many readers/audience members will not be engaged until the action begins. Maybe it's fortunate that the playwright presented it as one act, so there is no intermission allowing the audience to easily escape the theatre. That's good, because if you stick around for the ending, the play becomes thick with plot twists and strange characters. The resolutions are not always quite satisfying, but then, that's sort of the author's point. The resolutions of marriage issues in real life often aren't satisfying, and he has managed to string together a mulligan stew of cliched and not-so-cliched marriages, all of them less than idyllic, and most of them not quite comfortable, that he uses to make his points. The message is not subtle enough to be lost on the audience. Just in case it is, the author included a long introduction on marriage, laying out his arguments for the reform of the institution in England. Don't skip the introduction; it's worth the time. Recommended for anyone who thinks they know what "traditional" marriage is all about. ( )