John McAuliffe' s National Theatre dramatizes and values the performances of daily life, without ignoring those " noises off" with the power to disrupt our chosen lives. Subtle, revelatory, sensitively responding to a wide range of subjects (and to the lyric poetic tradition he inherits), the poems identify those moments of insight and vision which shape the lighting and staging of our imaginative lives. Here the aesthetics of the drama bear the exertion of gentle, often ironic, moral pressure. Like Horace, McAuliffe has great skill in observing the significance of the quiet life, asking if " it is / luck, instead-- all of it-- / to have a smallish house outside the fray." In this book, all the world' s a stage, as scenes shift from Ireland to Manchester, Paris and Bayeux, Bonn, Italy, and the Florida swamps. World leaders convene at a G20 summit in Rome, an influencer takes a series of selfies, the families of organ donors find quiet courage, and " a life swims / into the fortress of a formal device.".