WHAT THE AUDIENCE DOES FOR THE PLAYWRIGHT 

It isn't difficult to convince a playwright that his new, or first, play is great stuff; convincing him that it could have been better or could have been reworked or is a load of old cobblers is trickier. Tell him, and he'll write you off as a know-nothing. Put the play on for him and he'll blame the production. But give half a dozen performances each followed by a public discussion at which comments range so wide between home-spun commonsense and intellectual space-travel, between profound insight and pig-faced idiocy that one wonders how such diversity can come from one humanity—then, unless he's a Roman Catholic or something, he'll begin to wonder, not necessarily till later, whether some of the criticism might not be, for the wrong reason of course, right. 

Not that playwrights should be pandered to. The best thing to do with a load of old cobblers is to tie it round the author's neck and sink it. After all the talk, the only real reason for putting on a play is that it is recreational. This is the basis on which an audience should, and usually does, judge a play, and on which most playwrights, I think, would wish it to be judged. 

JAMES SAUNDERS