Music: Old Play in Manhattan, Dec. 29, 1952

The Children's Hour (by Lillian Hellman) is still, after 18 years, vivid and powerful. Into her tale of a child's fiendish lie that shatters tbe lives of two young schoolmistresses, Playwright Hellman packed a great deal of sheer vibrant theater. But for all the child's whispered charges of Lesbianism and her grandmother's shouted ones, The Children's Hour is something more than shocking, as it is something more than tense. Despite its heightened stage qualities, it cuts sharply back into lifeĀ—to the monstrous power of gossip, to the sick, psychopathic nature of evil, to...

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