Offerings include Hecuba, a "searing" play by Marina Carr about war and womanhood, directed by Erica Whyman, the RSC's deputy artistic director, and Queen Anne, a "gripping" play by Helen Edmundson about the intense relationship between Queen Anne and the Duchess of Marlborough, directed by Natalie Abrahami.
His brainy, preposterous, and intermittently gripping play hopscotches adroitly from D.C. to Rome to Damascus.
But the real success of this continually gripping play is that it turns pastiche into a form of criticism.
Even his gripping play The Chase (1952), an engaging anti-western in which the sheriff wants to avoid killing an escaped prisoner, lasted only a month on stage.
But this is still a rich, intellectually gripping play that gains immeasurably in London from the balance between the two performances.
I recently saw a gripping play about the life of ex-England cricketer Colin Milburn, who died an early death mired in depression and alcoholism.
It remains, with "Glengarry Glen Ross" (1984), Mr. Mamet's most affecting and gripping play, finding far-reaching depths of humor, pathos and tension in the inept plans of three small-time criminals to steal a coin collection.
"It is never difficult," PG Wodehouse wrote, "to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine". In Pressure, David Haig's gripping play about war and weather, Haig himself plays a dour Scottish meteorologist burdened by the need to find that ray of sunshine.
Try loosening your grip, playing with a lighter touch or changing the position in which you hold your guitar.
This should feel somewhat less natural than curling your thumb over the stick, but it's important for giving your traditional grip playing solid control.
