Williams, Tennessee (Vol. 30) - Eric Bentley

ERIC BENTLEY

[The essay "Boredom in New York" was originally published in 1948; "Better than Europe" was originally published in 1949.]

[In the dialogue of A Streetcar Named Desire there is] a liveliness that the American theater has heard from only two or three native playwrights. It is a dialogue caught from actual life and then submitted to only the gentlest treatment at the playwright's hands. In such a dialogue—as Odets showed us ten years ago—some approach to American life is possible. Life is no longer encased in wisecracks. Its subtle and changing contours are suggested by the melody and rhythm and passion of active speech.

A Streetcar Named Desire seems to me on the borderline of really good drama. If it is never safely across the border, it is because here too the sentimental patterns are at work which cramp most honest effort in the theater today. Perhaps we are not sure how limited, how small, Williams's play is...

[The entire page is 401 words long]

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