Frank D. Gilroy is a member of a generation of writers who move with apparent ease among the demands of writing for television, motion pictures, and the stage. Since the photographic media are capable of great sensitivity to nuance, of close attention to the small but telling gesture, it may well be that these have been influences upon Gilroy's work for the stage. If not, there is a coincidence of temperament; for Gilroy's stage work is marked not only by a considerable pictorial sense but also by an eye for the turn of head that makes words unnecessary, an ear for the phrase that marks its speaker, and a feeling--a close-up feeling--for what Robert Frost has called "inner weather." These qualities are seen at their highest pitch in Gilroy's best-known stage work to date, The Subject Was Roses, produced in 1964. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Tony, and...