Two of the major European playwrights of the twentieth century – Samuel Beckett and Bertolt Brecht – suffered opposite complaints about their work, with the Irish-French writer indicted of writing plays that were too ambiguous, while the German was arraigned for being too politically dogmatic. That example illustrates the difficulty calculating how clear a play should be. And Bakersfield Mist by the American dramatist Stephen Sachs, imported to London as a star vehicle for Kathleen Turner, thumpingly establishes that you can have too much clarity, although ironically as the dominating presence is one of the giants of abstract art. Sachs was inspired by the actual case of a retired American truck driver who picked up in a thrift store for a few dollars a canvas later identified