Richard Coles and guests review the world premiere of two short Brian Friel plays -
/4fterp/ay(starringJohn Hurt and Penelope Wilton ) and The Bear- both atthe Gate theatre, Dublin. And an interview with science-fiction novelist Kim Stanley
Robinson, whose new novel, The Years of Rice and Salt, imagines a world in which a plague has wiped out civilisation in 14th-century Europe.