Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Fast, Howard - Michael Kilian (review date 21 April 1987)

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Michael Kilian (review date 21 April 1987)

SOURCE: “Tom Paine Returns to Life—Briefly—on Stage,” in The Chicago Tribune, April 21, 1987, p. 3.

[In the following review, Kilian discusses Fast's stage version of Citizen Tom Paine and actor Richard Thomas's lead performance as Paine.]

Tom Paine lives.

He has been brought back to life by Richard Thomas, an actor of intellect and range who gained fame playing John-Boy in “The Waltons,” and playwright Howard Fast, the iconoclastic and prolific left-wing author of Freedom Road, Spartacus, The Immigrants and more than 40 other books, who was jailed and blacklisted in the 1950s for membership in the Communist Party (from which he subsequently resigned).

Their collaborative efforts have produced Citizen Tom Paine, a two-act patriotic play adapted from Fast's novel of the same title. It is a tour de force for Thomas, who nearly exhausts...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. George Mayberry (review date 10 May 1943)
   2. Irving Howe (review date 16 December 1957)
   3. Kenneth Fearing (review date 23 April 1961)
   4. R. Z. Sheppard (review date 7 November 1977)
   5. Merle Rubin (review date 30 September 1984)
   6. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt (review date 9 February 1987)
   7. Diana McLellan (review date 17 February 1987)
   8. David Savage (review date 22 February 1987)
   9. Jacqueline Trescott (essay date 3 March 1987)
   10. Howard Fast with Mervyn Rothstein (interview date 10 March 1987)
   11. Michael Kilian (review date 21 April 1987)
   12. Bruce Cook (review date 23 October 1988)
   13. Rhoda Koenig (review date 5 November 1990)
   14. Christopher Hitchens (review date 25 November 1990)
   15. Leo Braudy (review date 9 December 1990)
   16. Stefan Kanfer (review date 10-24 December 1990)
   17. Clancy Sigal (review date 20 January 1991)
   18. Ronald Radosh (review date March 1991)
   19. Gerald Meyer (review date Spring 1993)
   20. Howard Fast with Alan Wald and Alan Filreis (interview date 1995)
   21. George Traister (essay date 1995)
   22. Andrew Macdonald (essay date 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright