The Theater: Traveling Poem

Liveliest experiment in the U.S. theater last season—and the greatest triumph—was the brilliant, bare-stage reading of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell (TIME, Nov. 5, 1951). Flushed by such success, Producer Paul Gregory has launched a prompt successor: Stephen Vincent Benét's 1929 Pulitzer Prizewinning narrative poem, John Brown's Body. With Charles Laughton again directing and with another name cast—Judith Anderson, Raymond Massey, Tyrone Power—the production opened in California in November, plans to get to Broadway in February. Meanwhile, it is playing one-night stands throughout the U.S. to the tune of such critical cries from local critics as "thrilling," "stirring."

In popular appeal,...