Artistic merit isn't the only issue involved, and it rarely is. Even if Oscar Wilde might have thought it was, Birmingham Rep didn't in fact think it was, and it does appear to have made serious efforts over the years to recognise some of the other issues.

Here is an interesting letter from today's Guardian, by someone wh has actually seen the play, which fills out some of that stuff: Violence that threatens cultural exchange - "...as the historian of Birmingham Rep, I'm aware of the theatre's record in using public funds to "earn" rather than "assume" the right to stage works of intercultural significance...."

The point I've been making throughout is that a knee-jerk response to something like this is not appropriate, and that more information is needed before it is possible to form a judgement about what went wrong here. I was thinking in terms of the kind of information contained in that letter.