Meanwhile, Asa writes long, detailed letters to Choko about the Caveman Group's theatrical productions (with suspiciously exact recall of dialogue), and pages of reported speech are nested inside more reported speech, so that crucial scenes come third- or fourth-hand.
Think direct and indirect reported speech.
For centuries, artists struggled manfully with ways of codifying the idea of reported speech in graphic form.
FitzSimons deploys many of the techniques of fiction, reworking reported speech as dialogue and employing the present tense throughout.
It's just that we don't use the word in the Guardian unless it's in reported speech.
"I hate bainting," complained George II, "and boetry too", his German accent apparently conveyed in this gem of reported speech.
The Duke of Cambridge went to Beijing last spring and made a widely reported speech about the need to stop the ivory trade.
When eye dialect is, thankfully, no longer the fashion, reported speech like that in Ruxton seems magically to vanish from the historical record.
The play, like its successor Armageddon, is in reported speech rather than dialogue, which feels too writerly and interposes between audience and action.
Rather than just being a flossy bit of myth-making, this snatch of reported speech does tally with my own vague memory of the discussion.
