I find myself touched by "The Chinese Prime Minister" and I don't think it is because [the play is] … about the end of things coming so soon after they have just begun. I am touched, I think, because I have seen one whole play in which there is not a single careless line.
There are careless scenes, oh, yes. Quite a large portion of the middle act is taken up with a crossfire of family quarreling that has as its purpose the badgering of [the main character] until [she] is pushed into a vital, and mistaken, decision. The sequence is ratchety enough to badger you, too, and to make you wonder whether the silken strands of the evening can be gathered into one steady hand again. But even here "carelessness" is not quite the right word. For playwright Enid Bagnold never does anything simply because she cannot think of anything better to do. Whatever she does, she does on impulse, inspiration, with a jump and with a dagger in her hand, eyes gleaming. The gleam, the mad glint of her inspiration, may indeed flash out of the untidiest of corners. But in itself it is marvelously pure.
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