All plays are third person - they can't be anything else.

But you're right, and I was wrong - I agree that inhabiting all the characters *can* be done. You've reminded me that one of my favourite set of books is Donaldson's Gap series, mainly because he does pull off the trick of having a zillion characters with their own motivations and each only knowing a small fraction of the whole situation. (It's not a "literary" set of books to cite, but by and large I reckon "literary" just means "old" and not necessarily "good. But that's another argument altogether. ;-)

I guess the problem is that it takes a really first-rate author to make it works, and either it works or it fails utterly.

Graham.