SOURCE: "A Revaluation in the Light of the Absurd," in Sean O'Casey's Bridge of Vision: Four Essays on Structure and Perspective, University of Toronto Press, 1982, pp. 84-106.

In the following essay, Kleiman argues that O'Casey's plays express an absurdist view of life, but in a more humanistic tone than is registered in the works of Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and other playwrights associated with the "Theater of the Absurd."

Sean O'Casey's response to the dark world of the absurdists was, quite simply, one of outrage. 'For the life of me,' he complained bitterly in 'The Bald Primaqueera,' the last article he wrote before his death, 'I can't find anything humanly absurd in any of them.'

Earlier, in an article ['Not Waiting for Godot (1956)' in Blasts and Benedictions, 1967] written especially for students of the theatre, he wrote indignantly:

Beckett? I have nothing to do...