If you love theater, there are things here that may make you cry: in one of his last pieces, Clurman picked his all-time best New York theater season, 1924-25, which saw 228 shows including two new plays by Eugene O’Neill, Lunt and Fontanne in “The Guardsman,” Fred and Adele Astaire in the Gershwins’ “Lady, Be Good!” Katharine Cornell in Shaw’s “Candida,” Jeanne Eagels in “Rain” and on and on. Clurman was the most embracing of genuine theater intellectuals; he liked musicals and understood their importance while not sentimentalizing them. Catching the essence of Bernadette Peters, he sees beyond her “prettiness … and saucy verve” to a “purity that … approaches pathos.”
He had the guts to go up against popular views: his brilliant review of “A Streetcar Named Desire” criticizes Jessica Tandy for narrowness of emotional range: where the role of Blanche Du Bois demands an orchestra, “Miss Tandy’s register is that of a violin’s A string.” As with every great critic, you learn more from his exacting analyses when you disagree with Clurman than when you agree. The Group Theater came out of the ’30s preoccupation with social ills, but Clurman, as he says, was no Marxist. In an interview with Kenneth Tynan he describes directing a Clifford Odets play with an actor who was hemorrhaging social consciousness. “Why the hell are you getting so worked up?” asked Clurman. The actor said he wanted to “tear my heart out and bring out all the economic guilt I’ve been feeling over these years.” “Right,” said Clurman. “Act economic guilt for me. Come on. Let’s see some economic guilt.” This is a very big book, but Clurman was a very big figure.
