Two for the Seesaw is a prime example of the type of playwriting and production that prevails with metropolitan audiences by clever accommodation to their standards of taste, interest, and value. It is clever rather than profound playwriting but it also exudes an air of wisdom, kindliness and truth of character that makes friends at the box office…. Interest never flags in this comedy of sentiment until we are being prepared for the anticlimactic resolution. The continuously moving action, varied with many a reversal of mood, feeling, and situation, never gives the impression of thinness (though I think it is thin).
Two for the Seesaw starts with the meeting in New York of a cultivated Midwestern attorney, Jerry Ryan, who is about to get a divorce from his wife, and a footloose and fancy-free girl from the Bronx named Gittel Mosca, who is pursuing a doubtful career as a dancer. Jerry has a bad conscience about the wife from whom he is seeking independence, and Gittel has bleeding ulcers and a fiery but uncommonly sympathetic and yielding nature. Loneliness brings them together, and they surmount differences of religion and manners with wonderful ease…. Jerry and Gittel live together for months; they separate at last after she discovers and he admits that he still loves his wife. But the author tells us that they are both the better for their experience. They have matured; he has recovered confidence in himself while she has learned to defend herself against a too yielding heart. (pp. 212-13)
This is a free excerpt of 252 words. There are 918 words (approx.
3 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Gibson, William 1914–: Critical Essay by John Gassner Access Pass.
