Books, Arts & Manners: Wet TNT

The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, the new Waldenspiel by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, is being described in the ads as “TNT.” Mostly unexploded. It is a phenomenon of our theater that so nondescript a play should be so widely embraced and should make its creators such piles of money.

Thoreau has just received its first major professional production at Washington’s Arena Stage and will soon be seen in New York, with Frank Langella mentioned as a possible Thoreau. The Arena production is a marvel at concealing the play’s defects. Norman Crevanthour’s often inspired direction keeps the action a half-step ahead of the audience’s perception that what has just been said is vacuous and dramatically uninteresting.

RC

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Richmond Crinkley

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The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, the new Waldenspiel by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, is being described in the ads as “TNT.” Mostly unexploded. It is a phenomenon of our theater that so nondescript a play should be so widely embraced and should make its creators such piles of money.

Thoreau has just received its first major professional production at Washington’s Arena Stage and will soon be seen in New York, with Frank Langella mentioned as a possible Thoreau. The Arena production is a marvel at concealing the play’s defects. Norman Crevanthour’s often inspired direction keeps the action a half-step ahead of the audience’s perception that what has just been said is vacuous and dramatically uninteresting.