The Theater: New Play in Manhattan, Apr. 20, 1942

The Moon Is Down (by John Steinbeck; produced by Oscar Serlin). Primarily intended for the stage, The Moon Is Down was first rigged up as a novel (TIME, March 9), and inside five weeks sold almost half a million copies. Theoretically the tailor-made play should beat the makeshift novel all hollow; actually it can't come near it. Steinbeck's fable of how some unnamed but obviously Nazi invaders take over an unlocalized but obviously Norwegian mining town, meet with icy resistance and are themselves worn down, never really comes to life in the...

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