This tragedy written by Mr. Samuel Johnson is as frigid as the regions of Nova Zembla. Now and then you feel a little heat like what is produced by touching ice.

Samuel Johnson's play is surprisingly satisfying theatre despite almost two hundred and fifty years of critical condemnation. Far from being cold (that was James Boswell's criticism), the play contains a quite sophisticated story of a Christian woman caught between certain death and apostasy in the days following the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in 1453. The morality is quite complex and the tragedy, although diluted through the interference of a character named Abdalla, can be quite touching. This play has long deserved a new critical examination and a new production. Read it for yourself. It may surprise you. But be aware that the language is suited more for the declamatory stage than the realistic one. When we produced the play, the results were more than surprising. They were pleasing.
Give it a chance.