Volume 13, Number 8 · November 6, 1969
Scalp!
By Elizabeth Hardwick
The Serpent
by Jean Claude van Itallie, directed by Joe Chaikin
The Open Theater
Indians
by Arthur Kopit, directed by Gene Frankel
Brooks Atkinson Theater
Writing about the theater—is this a possible activity for the independent critic just now? Those who write for the newspapers and the popular magazines do so as a part of a larger enterprise. They have responsibility, so to speaks, for the activity called 'theater.' Other critics and writers, living in the eternal, may write of general ideas about dramatic literature without ever going out at night; and they would be no more negligent of their duty than would Professor Leavis by ignoring Jacqueline Susann or—who knows?—Ernest Hemingway. For one, however, who is self-propelled toward comment upon an art from, upon the passing scene, his very activity is fogged with doubt at a time like the present. Without a sufficient measure of positive feelings on cannot write to much purpose about any art from. In the shadow of the negative there must always be the promise of something hoped for, the lament for losses. In the long run, why are we asked to remind the world more than occasionally of the trashy? How can one give, time and again, attention to the trivial? To think of oneself as a constant corrective is a morbidity.
Review, 1823 words
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