Weales reviews a 1991 production of Mule Bone, the play's first in sixty years. The critic finds the play a "slight tall tale" that is "buoyed by its tremendous sense of fun."
For years, the phrase "Broadway play" has been a favorite pejorative in critical circles—academic ones, particularly. It was familiar even when works like Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire were Broadway hits, but no one ever knew precisely what it meant. Commercial? Predictable? Unlikely to disturb the patrons? Any or all of those, I suppose, but Broadway has never been quite the pigeonhole that play sorters have imagined it to be. There have always been producers who took chances on unusual works—not good ones necessarily—that outsiders, with the wisdom of the uncommitted, could recognize as sure losers. Even now, with fewer.....
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