Entry from Journal – In this entry he describes the out-of-town tryout of his new play “Night Music” – It would be the last play the Group Theatre did as a company. The failure of “Night Music” was the death knell for the ensemble – despite the fact that it is a LOVELY play. But Odets – radical revolutionary playwright of the early 1930s – wasn’t supposed to write lovely comedic romances. The audience wouldn’t forgive him for it.
February 22, 1940
The performance of the play was tip-top — the cast had never been better. The play suffered from what had always been wrong with it because of a certain lack in the direction — a lack of clear outlining of situations, a lack of building up scenes, a certain missing in places of dramatic intensity. But none of these things was enough to do vital harm to a beautiful show, smooth, powerful and yet tender, fresh, moving, and touching, with real quality in all the parts. But I could see during the first act that the audience was taking it more seriously than it deserved; and I knew that the old thing was here again — the critics had come expecting a King Lear, not a small delicate play. It all made me very tired, but at the end I thought to myself that it didn’t matter, for the show was more or less what I intended; it was lovely and fresh, no matter what the critics said. And I knew, too, that if another and unknown writer’s name had been on the script, there would have been critical raves that day.
People surged backstage after the curtain — they all seemed to have had a good time. There were the usual foolish remarks from many of them — “Enjoyable, but I don’t know why,” etc., etc. Also a good deal of insincere gushing from a lot of people who would like nothing better than to stick a knife in your ribs, God knows why!
I invited some people down to the house for a drink. Along came the Eislers, Kozlenkos, Bette, Julie [John] Garfield, Boris Aronson, Harry Carey and his wife, Morris [Carnovsky] and Phoebe [Brand] later, Harold [Clurman], Aaron Copland and Victor [Kraft], Bobby Lewis and his Mecican woman, etc., etc. We drank champagne, Scotch when the wine ran out, talked, smoked, filthied up the house, listened to some music. Then they went and I dropped into bed, dog-tired, unhappy, drunk, knowing what the reviews would be like in the morning. In and out I slept, in and out of a fever — all of modern twentieth-century life in one day and a night.
