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COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
On January 4, 1968, The New York Review of Books published a curious document. Written by Edmund Wilson, who was then seventy-two years old, and titled "An Open Letter to Mike Nichols," the essay, in epistolary form, was inspired by the revival of Lillian Hellman's 1939 drama "The Little Foxes," which Nichols had just directed. In the piece, Wilson expressed his admiration for Nichols's staging, and, referring to Walter Kerr's New York Times review of "Little Foxes" ("Its one unmistakable message," Kerr wrote, "is that we can have an American National Theater any time we want to"), he proposed that Nichols take up the challenge by producing a cycle of American plays--plays that were distinctly American in subject, history, and tone, and which might, like "Little Foxes," become "stage classics." Wilson submitted a list of suggestions which included A. E. Thomas's stage version of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Anna Cora Mowatt's "Fashion, or Life in New York," and "The Great Divide," by William Vaughn Moody. Most of the plays that Wilson recommended were likely unknown to younger audiences in 1968, let alone in 2005, but that only proved his point: to keep American drama alive, you have to...
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