Word: tynan
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According to Kenneth Tynan, the English dramatic critic who spent last weekend as a visiting lion at Winthrop House, a critic's specific opinions are less important than the attitudes that underlie them. In Tynan's case, private conversation reinforces the impression given by his articles in the New Yorker, where he is guest critic, that his basic attitude toward the theatre is a deeply serious one. In a profession populated largely by somnambulistic hacks, his Shavian emphasis on the relation of drama to life is rare and valuable. But his seriousness never declines into solemnity; his awareness...
...Tynan began writing criticism twelve years after his birth in 1927. As a scholarship student at Oxford he criticized and directed plays, edited a literary magazine, and served as secretary of the Oxford Union, "a sort of large-scale debating society." He had gone up to Oxford at the age of eighteen, at the close of World War II, a period when the University was largely dominated by returning veterans, many of them years older than he. "One had to in a sense work harder, because of the generation gap... And that I think was invaluable. One couldn't just...
...twenty-seven, Tynan became dramatic critic for The Observer of London, in which capacity he speedily made an impressive international reputation, and last fall he came to America (which he had visited every year since 1952) to write for the New Yorker. And so to Master Owen's living room at Winthrop House, where he appeared last Sunday in a maroon suit and loose knotted tie: a tall young man in his early thirties, with a battery of firmly held, well-expounded, and well-supported opinions...
British critic and playwright Kenneth Tynan will arrive at Harvard tomorrow for a three day visit at Winthop House. During his stay, he will meet informally with Winthrop undergraduates and Faculty members interested in drama. Tynan is currently drama critic for the New Yorker, while on a year's leave from his regular reviewing duties for the London Observer...
...Tynan's indictment of the play itself was forcefully seconded in The Village Voice by Jerry Tallmer, who added a few salvos of his own. Said he, "It is, in the kindest of all possible considerations, a big windy non-drama about God, Satan, and Job retold rather in the manner of such movies as Since You Went Away and The Best Years of Our Lives," and "written in what is also a sort of Hollywood verse." His reaction to the production, furthermore, was only lukewarm. Henry Hewes (Saturday Review) dismissed J.B. as "just an inconclusive effort...