Criticism’s Fine, Outright Dismissal Isn’t

For some time I’d wanted to present to Los Angeles a play by Romulus Linney set during the Vietnam War. It had, I thought, something remarkable in it, a particular and unusual view of the effects of that war that has so influenced our political and ethical thought.

During the Gulf War, the play was much in my mind as President Bush declared the upheavals of Vietnam now put to rest. After the Bosnian conflict erupted and U.S. participation was considered, Vietnam was constantly evoked, as it still is, appearing regularly on the editorial page of The Times.

Any place in the world where U.S. miliary involvement is discussed, Vietnam is a primary reference. The time seemed right to do “The Love Suicide at Schofield Barracks,” and the Odyssey Theatre agreed to produce the play. At about 70 minutes, “The Love Suicide” seemed too short for an evening of theater so two brief pieces of Linney’s were chosen to accompany it. The evening opened to generally favorable reviews, an exception coming from Richard Stayton of The Times, who dismissed “The Love Suicide” as “a redundant military courtroom drama” (Theater Beat review, Calendar, June 4).

He did not name the other two pieces in the evening, and did not say anything of the content of any of the plays, not even that “The Love Suicide” dealt with Vietnam. I was perplexed. George Bernard Shaw thought the Elizabethan playwrights worthless, save Shakespeare, and even with Shakespeare he took great issue. Tolstoy thought “King Lear” ridiculous and said so at great length. We all have our preferences and who is to say what strikes an individual mind or excites a particular imagination. Fine. But Shaw and Tolstoy, Kenneth Tynan and Stark Young, Walter Kerr and Frank Rich all explain their enthusiasms and disdain. Ibsen suffered hostile receptions, Samuel Beckett was greeted with opprobrium, Romulous Linney has no doubt had bad notices. But I don’t believe he has ever been so cavalierly dismissed.

Linney has written 37 plays and has two new ones ready to go. He’s written three novels and is head of the playwriting unit at Columbia University. He writes every day. He’s won Guggenheim and Rockefeller grants, NEA fellowships, Obie Awards, Drama-Logue awards, National Critics’ awards and the Mishima Prize for fiction. He is, to say the least, a respected and experienced commentator on our ethos.

Stayton’s review will have as much effect on the future life of “The Love Suicide” as a flea on the hide of an elephant. But its effect on the health and vitality of Los Angeles theater is another matter.

The smaller theaters, that is to say all besides the Mark Taper Forum and the larger houses booking road shows, are always in a fight for survival, limping along, buffeted by an impossible economic situation and only surviving because of people who must exercise their craft.

The theater will survive, of course, and audiences will continue to come, lured by the experience of confronting the real thing, the live performance where almost anything can happen and sometimes does. But if the theater is to retain vitality and enthusiasm, it must have some resonance in the community. It wants to be taken seriously.

The critic, serving as a conduit between play and public, is vital to the theater. The effect of Shaw’s championing of Ibsen can’t be overestimated; Kenneth Tynan eloquently laid a foundation for a new generation of English playwrights. The critical function would seem to exceed saying “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it.” We have to know the what and why in order to make an informed judgment.

“The Love Suicide,” written as a cri de coeur during the Vietnam War, was presented on Broadway in 1972 in two acts. In 1984 Linney revised it substantially for the Actors Theatre of Louisville. It was presented again in New York two years ago. It has occupied him, now and again, for 20 years.

This is just to indicate some of the effort and concern that has gone into this play. Well, one doesn’t get any points for that, but if any one of us had spent that kind of time and care on a piece of work and had the track record that Linney has and received such a notice from The Times, how would we feel? How would other playwrights, a great number of which hold Linney in high esteem, feel about presenting their work?

To dismiss such a writer as Linney as he addresses one of the great political and moral dilemmas of our time, to not even say that he is doing so, to ignore the content and idea of his work, let alone a discussion of it, seems to me a disservice to the public, the theater and all its people and perhaps most of all a disservice to The Times, where the theater should be discussed with the seriousness and sense of purpose worthy of a great news organization.