Culture

Sunday Reading: A Night at the Theatre


“In those years, our thought processes were becoming so magical, so paranoid, that to imagine writing a play about this environment was like trying to pick one’s teeth with a ball of wool.” This is how Arthur Miller describes the complexities of his early attempts to write “The Crucible,” which premièred at the height of the McCarthy era. Miller’s play spoke to a generation that was living in a kind of paralysis—its members fearful that, if they spoke up, they might be labelled subversive or unpatriotic. In that sense, his work, like so many remarkable dramas before it, offered a revealing and candid look at the price of human frailty.

This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces that explore the lives of dramatists and the world of theatre. Truman Capote travels to Leningrad and describes the events leading up to the Soviet première of the American opera “Porgy and Bess.” Wolcott Gibbs reviews the original Broadway staging of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and Kenneth Tynan writes about the original productions of “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Sweet Bird of Youth.” In “The Celluloid Brasserie,” Andy Logan visits Tennessee Williams and asks him about his hit play “The Glass Menagerie.” Larissa MacFarquhar profiles the playwright Edward Albee, and Hilton Als explores the world of Ntozake Shange. In “Beyond Nelly,” John Lahr chronicles the making of Tony Kushner’s epic drama “Angels in America.” Michael Schulman profiles Lynn Nottage and considers her tough yet empathetic portraits of America. Finally, Janet Malcolm traces the journeys of Anton Chekhov and revisits his plays. We hope that you enjoy these glimpses into the nature of dramatic artistry.


Why I Wrote ‘The Crucible’ 

“I am not sure what ‘The Crucible’ is telling people now, but I know that its paranoid center is still pumping out the same darkly attractive warning that it did in the fifties.”


Porgy and Bess in Russia

“The theatre grew quieter than a hens’ roost at sunset as the audience settled back, confident that now the curtain would rise and reveal what it had paid its rubles to see—‘Porgy and Bess.’ ”


Lower Depths, Southern Style

“ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ is a brilliant, implacable play about the disintegration of a woman, or, if you like, of a society.”


Ireland and Points West

“The supreme virtue of ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’ Lorraine Hansberry’s new play, is its proud, joyous proximity to its source, which is life as the dramatist has lived it.”


Passion Plays

“If there is a single theme that runs through Edward Albee’s work, it is the importance of being open to a full consciousness of life, with all the social and emotional risk that that entails.”


The Celluloid Brassière

“For a journalist unwilling to interview Tennessee Williams, who wrote the latest hit show, ‘The Glass Menagerie,’ the only alternative is giving up his press card.”


Color Vision

“For the first time, we were being shown a world of unimpeachable cool not as it played itself out around St. Mark’s Place but on Broadway, in a ‘choreopoem’ by Ntozake Shange called ‘for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf.’ ”


Beyond Nelly

“ ‘Angels in America’ was now officially in the world, covered more or less in glory. It was a victory for Tony Kushner, for theatre, for the transforming power of the imagination to turn devastation into beauty.”


Three Journeys

“If the trip to Sakhalin did not yield a work of literary distinction, its personal (and eventual literary) significance for Anton Chekhov was momentous. He needed to go on a journey.”


The Listener

“The playwright Lynn Nottage, who has thick dreads and a warm, warbling voice, has built a career on making invisible people visible.”



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