Wings (play) Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Harold Clurman

Critical Essay by Harold Clurman

Two intelligent people who accompanied me to see Arthur Kopit's Wings … found it boring. I on the other hand was fascinated.

The reason for this discrepancy of reaction—apart from the fact that such contradictions are always to be expected—is that the play is in a sense a monodrama, and it is always a "tricky" matter to maintain interest in a play almost wholly centered on a single individual. But the more crucial hazard in the project is that it undertakes a visualization of a cerebral stroke, its symptoms, its treatment and the possibilities of its healing….

If Wings is viewed simply as a sort of medical documentary, it may be considered informative but it cannot be genuinely evocative or moving in an artistic sense….

But Kopit's play is more than a description of a diseased condition. It is a metaphor, indeed a multi-metaphor. The patient and central figure is...
(read more)