An 'overpowering' play
Sir: Some drama critics, like certain politicians, are skilful at making rash judgments. How 'else explain Ted Whitehead's curt dismissal (1 October) of one of O'Casey's finest dramas, The Plough and the Stars (now enjoying a revival at the National Theatre)?
It is extraordinary that the same play he derides as 'unconvincing', 'facile' and 'shallow' was the very one which took Dublin and London by storm over fifty years ago, and the play of which Lady Gregory remarked: 'An overpowering play: I felt at the end of it as if I should never care to look at another; all others would seem so shadowy to the mind after this'.
Recently, another London critic threw a poisoned chalice over the play by referring to it as 'romantic melodrama'. Has dramatic criticism fallen into such a low state it cannot praise greatness when it crosses its path, or are today's critics so immersed up to the hilt in mediocrity they are incapable of distinguishing trauma from trash?
John O'Riordan 79 The Mall, London N14
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