The critical task is necessarily comparative, and younger people do not truly know what is new. - Pauline Kael

Apparently, Lillian Hellman couldn't shake off the predatory Hubbards after The Little Foxes; she wrote this play about the same family, setting it back 30 years earlier in their dark history. The Hubbards, who are supposed to be rising Southern capitalists, are the greatest collection of ghouls since The Old Dark House of 1932. Hellman must combine witchcraft with stagecraft — who else could keep a plot in motion with lost documents, wills, poisonings, and pistols, and still be considered a social thinker?

When we championed trash culture we had no idea it would become the only culture.

Kicked in the ribs, the press says "art" when "ouch" would be more appropriate.