Word: saroyans
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...Johnson's production of Hellzapoppin. Most costly flop: Dwight Wiman's production of Great Lady. Most gored theme: antifascism, which begot four failures. Up the ladder: The Group Theatre, which produced Clifford Odets' intense Rocket to the Moon, revived his brilliant Awake and Sing, presented William Saroyan's over-rated but original My Heart's in the Highlands. Down the chute: Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre which, after its sensational doings last season, collapsed on Broadway with the anemic Danton's Death, on tour with the acrobatic Five Kings...
...neither play could muster the twelve out of 15 votes necessary to win. After ten fruitless, disputatious ballots,* a weary Critics' Circle decided to make no award. Final score: The Little Foxes, 6 votes; Abe Lincoln in Illinois, 5; Clifford Odets' Rocket to the Moon, 2; William Saroyan's My Heart's in the Highlands...
...Heart's in the Highlands (by William Saroyan; produced by the Group Theatre) is the first play of William Saroyan, literary jackanapes and self-styled genius. Originally slated for only five performances, My Heart's in the Highlands was warmly praised by several critics, now plans an indefinite...
...point made by My Heart's in the Highlands is the old anti-Philistine insistence: that worldly success means nothing, that artistic failure means nothing, that what alone matters is man's vaulting imagination, his perdurable dream, the spiritual geography of his heart. On this theme Saroyan has composed the freest of fantasias, introducing rumbling chords of social protest, screwy dissonances, gaudy trills, touching pianissimos, mushy rubatos...
Violently anti-intellectual in his first play, as in most of his stories, Saroyan relies not on ordered thought but on a kind of surrealist association of words and moods. If his play is sometimes picturesque and tender, it is far too often soft, like a slushy Chopin nocturne: seeking to evoke something, never mind what; to bring tears to the eyes, never mind...