Peter Grimes (1945), Benjamin Britten’s first opera and one of the most widely recognised cultural milestones of the 20th century, is the post-war British theatre’s greatest ‘lost play’. That is the central premise of this provocative volume. Not content to only consider Peter Grimes on the largely musicological terms critical traditions have dictated, Sam Kinchin-Smith uses the Fourth Wall series’ bracing focus on ‘modern theatre’ to question whether this cornerstone of the operatic repertoire might also be thought of as a theatre text, and a highly significant one at that. By proving that on various levels, Peter Grimes is indeed an important and highly original play, this work explodes entrenched truisms about post-war performance history and suggests the many experimental theatre-makers working and finding inspiration in opera today ought to paying more attention to Britten – and perhaps other established fixtures of the operatic canon, too. Seeking not to overturn musicological criticism but rather to offer a new and more accessible way of thinking about opera that can productively coexist alongside it, this book is both thoughtful about Britten’s theatrical achievement and evangelical about the benefits of students and practitioners of performance engaging more with Peter Grimes.