Word: hellman
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...Lillian Hellman believes that accurate criticism is kinder than false praise, and her treatment of middle-class Jews is the kindest to head for Broadway in a long time...
Adapting Burt Blechman's novel, How Much? into a twenty-four scene farce, Miss Hellman imparts humor and meaning to characters, who in the book are haphazardly petty and distasteful. The play examines a family who formally seem to fulfill a television version of acceptable behavior, cute foibles, happy live... and judges them substantively immoral, destructive and miserable...
...criticism that America's most insightful writer tenders here is valuable, to the point, and necessary. She hits at the substance of middle-class self-deceit, not merely its forms... money, not "pressures," conformist lives, not conformist clothes or appliances. Fortunately, Hellman's skill is such that the power of the criticism serves to accelerate the pace and broaden the spirit of farce. And for all its commentary the play is invariably funny...
...Miss Hellman, whose plays have often touched on questions of money, family and religion (it becomes clear why the novel attracted her), is well-suited to oppose this tendency. Her work is humorous, but the laughter it evokes is critical. It portrays Jews to expose their aberrations rather than excuse them...
There hover over the play the tutelary figures of Strindberg, Hellman, the late O'Neill (especially Long Day's Journey Into Night), and the Sartre of No Exit. And why not? Albee was out to create a major work, and he might as well vie with the best. He has, in fact, come up with far and away the most impressive new American play to reach Broadway since Miss Hellman's Toys in the Attic three years...