Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Williams, Tennessee (Vol. 11) - John Whitty

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JOHN WHITTY

Williams has written some of the most moving dramas of the modern theatre. He is such a grand old man that I suppose no one will tell him when a play simply stinks. And that is what This Is (An Entertainment) does—rankly and raucously.

If this were merely an entertainment, we might try to respond in kind, but … [this is] an empty pretentious script….

It is of course possible to satirize politics and even revolution, as Dürrenmatt has done in grotesque tragicomedies, but Williams's revolution is simply irrelevant to his single character in a densely populated play. It is of course possible to laugh at a munitions maker as a crawling, sex-starved cuckold, but such figures would look better in Daily Worker cartoons than on [a] set. It is even possible to share the zest of a Countess for several lovers, but not when she mislays her children as easily as her cigarette lighter; and not when she buys that amatory zest...

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1. Introduction
2. John Simon
3. M. A. Corrigan
4. Michael Lassell
5. John Whitty
6. Mary Ann Corrigan
7. Charles Marowitz
8. Michael Anderson
9. Richard Gray
10. Copyright

1. Tennessee Williams