What Is Theater?

by Eric Bentley

The contemporary drama critic discusses various aspects of American and international theater and criticizes the dramatic styles of specific playwrights and actors

Genres: Plays, Nonfiction

1 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1968

About the author

Eric Russell Bentley was a British-born American theater critic, playwright, singer, editor, and translator whose work shaped twentieth-century theatrical discourse. Educated at University College, Oxford, and Yale University, where he earned his doctorate, he later taught at Black Mountain College and Columbia University and served as theatre critic for The New Republic. Known for his incisive and uncompromising criticism, he became one of the foremost English-language authorities on Bertolt Brecht, translating, editing, and performing Brecht’s work and recording landmark albums of Brecht songs. Bentley was also an accomplished playwright, with Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been, drawn from Un-American Activities Committee hearings, becoming his most produced play. He appeared for decades as a cabaret performer and was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. An advocate for artistic and political freedom, he publicly opposed the Vietnam War and later spoke openly about his homosexuality and its influence on his work.

Reviews

[Sketchbook · Rating 5 out of 5]

America's finest theatre critic was Eric Bentley -- rightfully praised by Kenneth Tynan. His essays stimulate the mind. Having just read Graham Greene's "The Living Room," a Bwy flop, but a success in London and Paris, I was engaged when Bentley wrote, "An autopsy is justified." He finds the drama meaningful, yet disappointing; I recommend his essay to those interested in Greene and the theatre. On Tennessee Williams: "No one can outdo his dialogue at its best." On Christopher Fry's "The Dark Is Light Enough" : The production was "less that of a Dionysian revel than of parents' day at a private school."

What's this: Graham Greene, Christopher Fry plus Anouilh and Shaw on Broadway, 1954-55 ? It wouldn't happen today and it won't happen again. In this century Broadway is for dummies. Don't tell anyone; we need to prop up the biz.