What is theatre?: Incorporating The dramatic event, and other reviews, 1944-1967

by Eric Bentley

Introduction by Donald Lyons

What Is Theatre?, originally published in 1968, collects some of Eric Bentley's theater criticism. Another key book is Bentley's "The Dramatic Event." Bentley's most productive years as a reviewer coincided with the greatest years of 20thC drama. His essays cover T. S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, Jean Anouilh, and Arthur Miller, among others, as well as subjects as far-ranging as Charlie Chaplin and the Peking Opera. Bentley is essential for understanding the American theater.

Genres: Plays, Nonfiction

491 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1968

About the author

He was a theater critic and translator.

Taught freshman English at UCLA for a year. And that is where he met the "German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who had recently immigrated to the United States after fleeing Nazi Germany and was unknown in this country. The two of them became close, and it was Bentley who translated a lot of Brecht's work into English and helped establish his career in America."

source - American Public Media

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.