Mr. Odets' "Night Music" has been generally taken, in so far as I have read comments on it, as a sort of Manhattan "Boy Meets Girl," that Hollywood story, with its appealing jibe…. If Mr. Odets' play was taken this way, as a Manhattan idyll with et cetera trimmings, it is largely his own fault rather than the reviewers' stupidity, as some would have us believe.

It is Mr. Odets' fault for two reasons. First, there is the kind of wandering, seemingly casual, tangential quality in "Night Music" by which it meanders along, or seems superficially at least to do so, until at the last the Good Friend detective has—without beard or reindeer or stockings—brought the young man and the young woman to a cheerful mood, courage, sweetness, yes, and bright advance on the American future that they will share and help create. I hope I can manage to be clear at this point—to do so is difficult without the attendance at the performance assured and remembered or the full text spread out for one to read. A friendly comment tells us that the "play stems from the basic sentiment that people nowadays are affected by a sense of insecurity; they are haunted by the fear of impermanence in all their relationships; they are fundamentally homeless, and whether or not they know it, they are in search of a home, of something real, secure, dependable in a slippery, shadowy, noisy and nervous world."

This search for a home and a security genuinely human can, of course, go in many directions and take many forms, comic, tragic, what not. On the whole, as Mr. Harold Clurman, director of the play [says] …, "Night Music" tends to present "this deeply serious pursuit" in a light vein, wistful, pathetic, even farcical.

To take "this pursuit" is all very well, but taking it thus does not consist in that lively, skip-the-rope, youthful dénouement. No! Taking "this pursuit" thus demands that certain elements shall be found all through the play—such elements are as a matter of fact now and again present, delightfully and truly—and demands a tone in the conclusion of it that sustains the whole approach and impression thus intended or presupposed. As the play stands, however, this is not true: those forward-looking speeches, almost doctrinal or dogmatic, that appear from time to time are often what we might call inserted—they connect, for one instance, rather poorly with the central character, this young man that Mr. Odets writes every one of his plays around, this hero of assorted races—Jewish, Italian, Greek, but always the same. In sum the tone, the general tone, of "Night Music" is not either continuously or definitely or with any total unity established.

Second, in the struggling, loving and aspiring of which we hear in connection with the play, Mr. Odets' idea, or theme, apparently is that the acceptance of the struggle without bitterness or self-pity promises the possibility of growth and of a world where such characters as these in "Night Music" may find a home. Nowadays, that is the kind of statement that may be as good as any other, provided we are catching a train, rushing to cocktails, or to a motor car or supper club, or writing a column, or making a broadcast or listening to the radio, et cetera, et cetera: it will serve—just as one hasty counter lunch is as good as another. Otherwise it is, by default, 50-percent nonsense. Did any historian ever frankly record a civilization, or a social system, that sprang from this negative-positive condition? To stop being sour and stop feeling sorry for yourself is all very well; it is the first step, and almost to be taken for granted. But afterwards comes something else again. There must be some conception—or at least some semi-conception—to go on with. Bitterness, self-pity, the sense of disadvantage, etc., are certainly not desirable as traits that are operant in oneself, and certainly they should be corrected, dramatically or otherwise; but they are all a private disease, not the basis of a social theory.

To give up bitterness, malice and self-pity and start "seeking" may be in certain cases, if you like, a profoundly important move; but it remains, nevertheless, a matter of cases. It is a very limited procedure. It is as if socially (meaning—old style—sociologically) one had never grown up: one has merely turned away from his lamentations. Such a turning, such antistrophic vision and movement, is not enough. Its quality may be lyrical, violent, vitriolic, seething, rabid; or it may be international; or, as against some extant and resented state of things, revolutionary. But essentially it is nomadic, barbaric and without logic. Whatever the boasted tradition of intellectualism behind it may be, it is without all clarity of mind ultimately, without even any passionate mentality that could be said to exist beyond the sheerly subjective.

There is, furthermore, a question that in all fairness should be raised. Can we demand from a dramatist, in an age like ours, scattered, distracted, surging, wide, chopped-up and skimmy, that he provide his play with a background of social conceptions that are basic, sound, organized, prophetic, deep-rooted? Shall he, in sum, be asked to draw the hare of heaven from a shallow cap? The answer is no, we can scarcely demand that. In general we should remind ourselves that there is no reason to ask any theatre to surpass its epoch in solidity, depth or philosophic summation.

Could we ask, then, this everlasting young man of Mr. Odets' play—with that exhibitionism, very considerable commonness, slight hint of the pathetic, and endless resentment—to compensate us somewhat by manifesting some tangible notion of just what his philosophy of life may be, what the nature is of his passionate dream, and, in plain English, what it is he wants and if there is anything he can think of that would put him out of this stew he is in? The answer again is that this would be desirable, but not reasonably to be demanded. We can, however, ask that the dramatist himself make clear the point that the young man does not know. (pp. 377-78)