By the time he was writing Gossip in 1977, George Walker had already begun to shift his settings from, on the one hand, North America's colonial roots in Europe, and on the other, its fascination with other, exotically foreign locales. Yet, even in The Power Plays , Walker is still exploring the ironic and dramatic possibilities of the stereotypes (albeit, by this time, home-grown ones) that continue to provide the fertile ground of contemporary North...