SUBURBAN THEATER
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pirations, supports a theater which is occasionally distinguished, but
more often vapid, neutral, de-energized, and pretentious. Broadway
has undoubtedly revised upwards its estimate of the audience's in–
telligence, but its more sophisticated forms are, nevertheless, more
rigid than ever, and a good deal more restricting to the imagination.
There is no sinister design behind this. It is the inevitable con–
sequence of an age in which the gap between the consumers and crea–
tors of the theater has considerably narrowed. In the past, a theater
man was often alienated from the audience automatically by virtue
of his different politics, income, education, and background. Today
these distinctions are disappearing. Producers, playwrights, directors,
actors, and even reviewers are beginning to share with the specta–
tors the same ways of life, standards of success, and artistic pre–
tenses,":' The age of Mike Todd is over; the time of David Susskind
begins. Thus, Broadway dran1a, at its most typical, is a pleasant con–
versation between the audience and the stage into which no note of
controversy or disagreement is ever introduced. Today, when subur–
ban values are falling in ruins about our ears, when the most striking
thing about our culture is the wide chasm between what is affirmed
and what is practiced, this dialogue has all the significance of a talk
before a mirror in a sealed off room.
• ct.
Arthur Miller: "I've gone to a University, and I've spent a good
many years reading, studying and so on-but I don't think that anything that
I feel is alien to what pretty much the average American feels. And I don't
think I know more than he does." He is talking about the "common man" but
his remarks are more appropriate in reference to the suburban spectator.
