Swift
Daily Mail review
Jonathan Swift was not just the author of Gulliver's Travels, but a troubled soul who laid the foundation for modern political satire as he raged against the follies of mankind.
His description of the Lilliputians, a pernicious little race whose leaders killed thousands abroad to detract from their failures at home, still strikes a chord today.
In his private life, Swift had many disappointments, including his love affair and possible secret marriage to a girl in the household of his patron Sir William Temple. Rumour had it that she and Swift were both Temple's by-blows.
This one-man play sees Swift alone, near the end of his life, resigned to his lowly status as Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin.
Jeffrey Mayhew gives an engrossing portrayal of a complex man whose constant raging sprang from a hypersensitive awareness of man's inhumanity to man.
Swift's A Modest Proposal – a blackly satirical attack on British treatment of Ireland's poor, suggesting their children should be roasted and eaten by the rich – used shock tactics to drive his point home, but was written by a man whose greatness lay in his kindness and humanity.
Jeremy Hodges, August 23rd 2005