SOURCE: A review of The Shadow of a Gunman, in The Spectator, Vol. 138, No. 5164, June 18, 1927, p. 1062.

In the following review of the Court Theatre production of The Shadow of a Gunman, Jennings perceives a problem with O'Casey's comedic timing and the play's tragic intent.

Mr. Sean O'Casey's Shadow of a Gunman, now running at the Court Theatre, has renewed the old controversy about ill-timed laughter in the theatre. Playgoers will not accept rebuke from dramatic crities, and, in spite of a strong denunciation in the Times, I found an audience, a few nights later, still laughing loudly at scenes that entangled everyday Dublin humours with tragic emergencies—the compound being characteristic of Mr. O'Casey's method. Have we, then, forgotten all about the horrors in Ireland? Do they mean nothing to us? Or was it, rather, that Mr. Arthur Sinclair, as the pedlar, having compelled mirth, from the depths...