Silverstein, Shel - Charles Isherwood (essay date 29 October 2001)
Charles Isherwood (essay date 29 October 2001)
SOURCE: Isherwood, Charles. “An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein.” Variety 384, no. 11 (29 October 2001): 35.
[In the following review of the theatrical production “An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein,” Isherwood criticizes the series of one-act plays as tiresome, dated, tasteless, feeble, and lacking in humor.]
According to the program of the Atlantic Theater Co.'s “An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein,” the late Silverstein, who died in 1999, wrote “hundreds” of short plays. Assuming the 10 collected in this omnibus are among the strongest, it's safe to say that Silverstein's dramatic output is not going to have the enduring appeal of his famous children's books such as The Giving Tree and Where the Sidewalk Ends.
The sketches in this tiresome evening are fitfully amusing, but they are more frequently dated, tasteless or just plain feeble, and they are...
[The entire page is 624 words long]
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- Introduction
- Principal Works
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Criticism
- Anne Collins (review date 22 June 1981)
- Publishers Weekly (review date 18 September 1981)
- Variety (essay date 22 June 1983)
- Nancy Larrick (essay date October 1986)
- Ruth K. MacDonald (essay date 1986-1987)
- Melanie Kirkpatrick (review date 12 December 1989)
- Variety (essay date 13 December 1989)
- Mimi Kramer (review date 25 December 1989)
- Robert Brustein (essay date 29 January 1990)
- Publishers Weekly (review date 16 November 1992)
- Publishers Weekly (review date 29 April 1996)
- Maj Asplund Carlsson (essay date spring-fall 1996)
- Ruth K. MacDonald (essay date 1997)
- Ruth K. MacDonald (essay date 1997)
- Bart Barnes (essay date 11 May 1999)
- Megan Rosenfeld (essay date 11 May 1999)
- Publishers Weekly (essay date 17 May 1999)
- Ellen Handler Spitz (essay date May/June 1999)
- Charles Isherwood (essay date 29 October 2001)
- Further Reading
- Copyright
