Two gardeners at a Cambridge college have lost their jobs because one of them, Wattmore, is suspected of having tampered sexually with the small son of the college's chief gardener. The other, Griffin, his loyal friend, has resigned in protest and solidarity. They live in the Cambridgeshire fens together, a pair of thickly-accented peasant types, in one of those unacknowledgedly complicated male bondings. Wattmore, in addition, has got religion – in the shape of adherence to a local lay preacher with his own strange version of Christianity focused on the Archangel Michael. 
     Wattmore has been severely beaten by thugs hired by the molested boy's father. He is broken, nervous, suicidal. In an effort to keep them going Griffin tries to trap rabbits on the fens. He never does; in fact, it seems, it is a cover for attacking and robbing birdwatchers, an expedient to which their poverty forces him. In an endeavour to make regular money in both senses, Griffin persuades Wattmore that they should take in a lodger. 
     The lodger is a truly memorable character, memorably played by Jessica Stevenson – a tough ex-Holloway Prison convict called Bolla Fogg. Her irruption into their lives precipitates the comic, and in the end tragic, denouement. The device which gets them there is the fact that Griffin is trying to write a poem for a £2000 prize offered by Cambridge university, and in prison Bolla learned many poems by heart, including Marvell's "The Garden", which to the amazement of the two gardeners she recites. 
     This is a strange, haunting, compelling tale. In atmposphere it has touches of an English fenland "Deliverance" about it, together with a hint of "Straw Dogs". It is full of menace and yet of pity, and of wit and penetrating observation. The loyalty between the principals, Wattmore and Griffin, leads them to do things for one another which only the deepest love can explain.
    The play startles at first with seeming-absurdities and sudden unexpected twists; yet each turns out to be an entirely logical unfolding of the drama. It is excellently done – both in the writing and in the acting, with formidable performances by all four of the main characters. If there is a caveat it is that Griffin's fenland accent is impenetrable at first, at least to some of the audience; the ear strains to catch his drift, and eventually does, but only after he has a good deal to say early on, much of it – if the laughter of those who understood him is a measure – apparently very funny. The wit is prelude to death, and the death is the consequence of sin; it is a play about sinners, and about the odd, poignant tenderness that exists among them.
AC Grayling