Michael Portantiere takes a look at Days to Come:
It's interesting to debate just where Lillian Hellman's reputation as a playwright stands as compared to her contemporaries in terms of quality, prolificity, and also revivability. The Little Foxes, that nest of venal Southern vipers, has proven to be an enduring classic, never long absent from the world's stages. (Last year's Broadway revival with Laura Linney and Cynthia Nixon alternating in the two female leads was a deserved hit.) But several other Hellman plays that were highly regarded and successful in their day — The Children's Hour, Watch on the Rhine, Toys in the Attic, et al. — are infrequently revived, presumably because they're perceived to be dated and/or otherwise flawed in significant ways. As for Hellman's book for the musical Candide, that has been suppressed for decades, according to her own wishes (although I think I just found the complete or near-complete text online, with the help of our friend Google). . . . |
