[1] It was performed 18 October – 22 November 1985 by the Royal Shakespeare Company at The Pit in The Barbican Centre as part of a season of three Barker plays (the other two being revival productions of Downchild and Crimes in Hot Countries).

[2] The play was, in part, inspired by the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, which was set up by female protestors who were campaigning for nuclear disarmament.

This new female-led society rejects patriarchy, Christianity, law enforcement, ownership of land, monogamy and shameful feelings towards female genitalia.

[6] By contrast Milton Shulman was highly critical, citing lines of "verbal gibberish" and "pseudo-profundity" which "impresses Barker’s admirers [but] for the rest of us, his efforts to use words like a chop across the windpipe does become wearing", adding that "Obsessed by the potency of references to private parts, Barker displays an adolescent reliance on four-letter expletives to make his belligerent points.

"[8] Other critics were more mixed in their feelings towards the play's dialogue, with Ian Herbert writing in Theatre Record "Is [Howard Barker] an effing (and blinding) genius, or an incurable logorrhoeiac?"

Andrew Rissik declared the play to be "a piece of theatre whose intellectual range and depth of feeling continually amaze, disconcert and compel"[10] whilst John Barber of The Daily Telegraph wrote "SETTING up shop as a dramatist of ideas, Howard Barker lacks the two basic requirement: a cool head, and a fertile intellect.

Praise came from Andrew Rissik, stating that "Far from being narrowly polemic, this is a political drama in the widest, most searching and subversive sense",[10] with Michael Billington writing that "what makes it a stirring theatrical fable […] is that the issues are never clear-cut".

[6] However, Milton Shulman was highly critical, dismissing The Pit's Barker Season for "flirt[ing] with obscenity, blasphemy, anarchy and verbosity […] in the name of feminism, Christian-baiting, England-bashing, anti-nuclear propaganda.

[13] Barney Bardsley for City Limits wrote that in the play "Barker denies the strength of women, but despises the tyranny of men in what turns out to be a moving and eloquent admission of defeat.

John Barber wrote that "finding he cannot pursue an argument to the end, [Barker] whips himself into a rage of blasphemy, obscenity, gratuitous violence and sensationalism, with every possible effort to shock.

Every issue he confront relies upon the shout, the shudder and the shock for its dramatic impact" and even stated that the actress Harriet Walter "should be demanding extra humiliation money for permitting herself to be attached to such a barbaric spectacle.