[In the following, the anonymous critic gives the dual bill of "Till the Day I Die" and "Waiting for Lefty" a favorable reception.]

In less than ninety days, toiling with the unrest of his times as a central theme, a young actor in the New York theater, a young actor who was competent, but never performance-material to make the heavens sing in praise of him, has become the most exciting spokesman the world of workers yet has produced, and, as something more than mere lagnappe to that feat, he has become perhaps the most articulate dramatist available in the theater.

Clifford Odets, almost a boy, lean, nervous, aflame with indignation at what he sees around him, is the author of three plays which have made his name a new force in drama, and his work a new power for the restoration of drama.

A few weeks ago the theater was slipping naturally and quietly into the sleep of spring. When everything else in nature awakens, it is the custom of the drama to close its eyes for the long snooze.

This season was no different, until, one night, not long ago, the Group Theater presented Awake and Sing! Superficially, this was a play about middle-class Jewish family-life in the Bronx. Beneath it, however, beat a new rhythm, a new voice was being heard, and it spoke eloquently, persuasively, and with passion, against the confusion of these times.

There have been dozens of plays with the same theme, some comedies, some tragedies, most of them clumsy and self-conscious. This one was none of these, and, next morning, Mr. Odets was hailed by every critic in New York.

He had written a short play about the 1934 taxicab-drivers' strike in New York. A bitter arraignment of the forces which herded the deluded drivers and exploited them, the Group gave it special Sunday night performances in a downtown theater.

In a few weeks the public clamor for the work of Odets had risen to that point where this producing organization had to bring it up into Broadway for regular showing. To it was added another short Odets play: "Till the Day I Die," an anti-Nazi preachment based on the information smuggled out of Germany in a letter.

This play and "Waiting for Lefty," the taxicab-strikers' play, have been made into a single evening's program. It is an evening of, candidly, propaganda. His Nazi play is the first one to take note of the plight of Communists in Germany.

Until now, three previous Nazi plays have concerned themselves only with the persecution of the Jews. Odets ignores this point completely, and centers his violent protest on the Hitler-Brownshirt activities against Communists. He details the subterfuges to which they are driven, he recites the tortures, he makes a ringing, courageous appeal for consolidation of the united front in Germany.

He works with the simples of the problem, deriving his power from showing the actual impact of the situation on humans as recognizable as a next-door neighbor. There is a place for propaganda in the theater; indeed, it is its natural pulpit. Odets appears to have recognized that, and rationalized it.

"Waiting for Lefty" is Mr. Odets at the sum of his best. His play roves the entire theater. It is played simultaneously on stage, in the orchestra section, and from the gallery. The audience is, in effect, a meeting of desperate taxicab-drivers.

Audiences at the three Odets plays have been mixed, mixed, that is, from a political point of view. Liberals, Communists, middle-class men and women with good jobs, and men in the ranks which still represent capitalism, mingle together, and watch these plays. The roar and surge of the propaganda in them inflames the Communistic patrons, but not once has it, also, failed to impress and give pause to those who, at heart, and in their minds, are opposed to what the plays represent.

And in that lies the strange, exciting magic which Clifford Odets has brought to the theater in this short, short time. The humanity of his plays is irresistible to all.