… PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORIAE, a powerful and intelligent new play by the American Richard Nelson, which explores the brutal and bloodied relationships between politics and art, and between literature and life in a Latin American country fifteen years ago and today…

Michael Ratcliffe, The Sunday Observer

Modern American plays rarely confront public issues head-on: Indeed, after a year in New York, a colleague came home muttering darkly about the prevalence of what he termed ‘diaper-drama’. But Richard Nelson’s rich and stimulating PRINCIPIA SCRIPTORIAE-now at The Pit (The Royal Shakespeare Company) after playing at the Manhattan Theater Club this April-is a genuine play of ideas. It deals with the fate of the writer under left- and right-wing regimes, with the complex motivation behind creation, and indeed with the abiding consolation of literature itself…

Michael Billington, The Guardian