'Where but to think is to be full of sorrow / And leaden-eyed despairs’ (from Ode to Nightingale, Keats, 1819). It’s from the poem discussed at the start of this play, yet that verse’s themes of mortality, pleasure and nature are barely discussed. Instead, there is a discourse on the poet’s name and the definition of an obscure word, both delivered with unwarranted aggression to the student.

Robert Cusenza is the Christian Brother, ever present in front of a blackboard, a teacher’s desk – and a leather strap always at the ready. The students are there in spirit, one particularly errant boy represented by a wooden chair.

As a stern teacher, Cusenza’s face is taut, serious, and always looking for the disobedience, wrong answer, or really any excuse to reach for his leather strap and initiate punishment to the student.

When Blair wrote the play, it was reported that it was as a catharsis to an education he hated, yet this is a more nostalgic presentation of an individual struggling with his vocation, his ability to teach, and above all, his faith. The revelations of widespread physical and sexual abuse within this particular system weren’t made known for another twenty years, so it shouldn’t be expected that this play looks at that beyond the corporal punishment that was ‘of its time’. Yet it feels disingenuous to present something so respectful of that system with the benefit of that knowledge.