Williams, Tennessee (Vol. 30) - George Jean Nathan

GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

[A Streetcar Named Desire], which might well have been titled The Glans Menagerie, has been criticized in some quarters as an unpleasant [play]. The criticism is pointed. But the fact that a play is unpleasant, needless to say, is not necessarily a reflection on its quality…. There is a considerable difference between the unpleasant and the disgusting, which is the designation Mr. Williams' critics probably have in mind, and his play is not disgusting…. Williams has managed to keep his play wholly in hand. But there is, too, a much more positive borderline between the unpleasant and the enlightening, and he has tripped over it, badly, While he has succeeded in making realistically dramatic such elements as sexual abnormality, harlotry, perversion, venality, rape, and lunacy, he has scarcely contrived to distil from them any elevation and purge. His play as a consequence remains largely a theatrical shocker which, while it may...

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