“No one really knows anything much about a play until it meets its first audience; not its director, its actors, its producers, and least of all its author. The scenes he has counted on most strongly, his favorite bits of fine writing–the delicately balanced emotional or comedic thrusts, the witty, ironic summing up, the wry third-act curtain with its caustic stinging last line that adroitly illuminates the theme–these are the things that are most likely to go down the drain first, sometimes with an audible thud.”
Moss Hart, Act One
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
