Burning Bright (by John Steinbeck; produced by Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein 2nd) suggests that misused talent can be more distressing than none at all. In this reversible raincoat of a "play-novelette,"* Steinbeck tells of a sterile husband (Kent Smith) with a fierce yearning for parenthood. His wife (Barbara Bel Geddes), out of love for him, conspires to have a child by another man. At first crushed and incensed when he learns the truth, he is at length comforted with a transcendental sense of being the father not of one child but of all children.
Steinbeck has chosen for this theme the...