Mr. Odets' "Night Music" has been generally taken, in so far as I have read comments on it, as a sort of Manhattan "Boy Meets Girl," that Hollywood story, with its appealing jibe…. If Mr. Odets' play was taken this way, as a Manhattan idyll with et cetera trimmings, it is largely his own fault rather than the reviewers' stupidity, as some would have us believe.
It is Mr. Odets' fault for two reasons. First, there is the kind of wandering, seemingly casual, tangential quality in "Night Music" by which it meanders along, or seems superficially at least to do so, until at the last the Good Friend detective has—without beard or reindeer or stockings—brought the young man and the young woman to a cheerful mood, courage, sweetness, yes, and bright advance on the American future that they will share and help create. I hope I can manage to be clear at this point—to do so is difficult without the attendance at the performance assured and remembered or the full text spread out for one to read. A friendly comment tells us that the "play stems from the basic sentiment that people nowadays are affected by a sense of insecurity; they are haunted by the fear of impermanence in all their relationships; they are fundamentally homeless, and whether or not they know it, they are in search of a home, of something real, secure, dependable in a slippery, shadowy, noisy and nervous world."
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