Mr. Reaney's comedies demand of their audience, at least temporarily, a capacity to believe that the weapons of human consciousness—religion, art, thought, and love—can defeat all destructive powers. His plays are not for cynics, nor for those too sophisticated to let themselves play games if necessary to exorcise the black enchantments laid on them in childhood. The measure in which we feel these resolutions silly, or too far-fetched, is the measure of our own Malvolio-like nature. If the art of the comedy has done its work—and Mr. Reaney's plays have this art in abundant measure—our emotions of sympathy and ridicule have been raised and cast out…. (pp. 132-33)

Alvin Lee, "A Turn to the Stage: Reaney's Dramatic Verse" (copyright by Alvin Lee; originally published in Canadian Literature, Winter, 1963), in Dramatists in Canada: Selected Essays, edited by William H. New, The University of British Columbia...