… Strictly Controversial

Extract

When my favorite drama critic, Brooks Atkinson, and my favorite playwright, Arthur Miller, make the same mistakes about politics and playwriting, I can conclude only that Atkinson and Miller, like most people, are very nice guys who don't always appreciate the appeal of evil. In an interview I had with Mr. Miller for the radio series “Ideas and the Theatre,” he stated that he would like to see more right-wingers and even fascists writing for the theatre, to keep the drama a true forum. Approaching the same error from another angle, Mr. Atkinson devotes more than a thousand words in his column of June 22nd (1958) answering the question “why don't you do something about the spate of depressing plays?” without ever seeing any political implications in the topic.