The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-01-20
Editor, The DAILY WORKER:


Please allow me few exceptions
to Sender Garlin's review of Lawson's
"The international" which appeared
in Mondays issue. First note about
the whole business of newspaper
criticism of plays: naturally if you
go to the trouble of inviting news
paper men to the openings of your
shows you have no reason to kick if
they spill their bile afterwards.
Newspaper criticism is only impor-
tant in connection with and as
symptom of the battle of ideas that
accompanies the attempt to introduce
a new form in social life, the arts or
dress goods, or anything.
Criticism is a lineup, whoever isn't
with YOU is against you. In trying
to start a radical theatre we have
acted on the assumption that such an
enterprise would be valuable to the
people connected with it, to the labor
movement and to the playwright
trade in general. Naturally nearly
everybody else thinks the opposite.
But it is disappointing at moment
when we have our backs against the
wall and are getting the universal
raspberry from all the capitalist
nress. to find The DAILY WORKER,
so VIGOROUSLY lenient and uncarplng
in it's reviews of uptown shows that
get universal praise, giving the New
Plavwrights' Theatre such careless
and half-hearted write-up as Sender
Garlin's.
I don't mean for a second that we
want or expect praise or unstlnted
boosting. Obviously the theatre is
not Communist or definitely tied up
with any section of the labor move
ment and it's plays are far from being
doctrinally kosher, but as an attempt
to start an organization that may be
useful eventually and that serves as
certain focus (tainted if you wish
with all the "liberal," "demibour-
geois" and intellectual diseases)
for revolutionary ideas, | do think
that it's plays deserve careful and
expert consideration.
In common with his brethren of the
headline press your reviewer was so
anxious not to be shown that he COM
pletely missed the slant of the play.
"The international" is not as he
seemed to imply written in the cur
rent idiom of the New York stage,
the way Broadway" or "Coquette"
is. where the aim is to create an illu-
sion that the characters are real and
that what is going on on the stage is
really" happening. An attempt was
made in the staging and writing to
go back to the simple popular forms
of old melodrama and burlesque in
which the actors are visibly actors
and out of their career across the
boards of the stage; and from eight
forty-five to eleven-ten a pattern
arises in the minds of the audience.
This pattern, in this case, is a very
personal and subjective emotional
outburst expressing one mans feel
ings under the impact of our world
today. "The international" is broad
cartoon Of the dynamics of current
history. 1t uses all the stock car
toon figures and ideas, varying them
to its own purpose. Because it is
the first time that this has been done
on the American stage everybody
comes out clustered and starts ours
ing the play out for not being "real-
istic" or a number of things that it
never intended or wanted to be.
That's all very well, you say, but
the readers and editors of The DAILY
WORKER have got more important
things to worry about than the tech
nique of the drama. But that's why
you send man around who is pre-
sumably an expert ito act as critic