As a composition for the theater, "Tea and Sympathy" is entrenched in that plenitude and elegance of craft of which the American stage is sometimes capable: dramatically, it has been arranged with economy and poise; its psychology is fashionable, its "values" unexceptionable. What elevates it to serious interest is a refinement of personal feeling, and a certain ambiance in which Mr. Anderson has wisely permitted the play to repose….

Mr. Anderson's dish of tea, sweetened with love, is served to a troubled adolescent (again), maliciously accused of sexual inversion in an aggressively "adjusted" New England prep school. Amid so much contempt and bullying, the boy finds an ally in his housemaster's warm and responsive young wife, and together they share in innocent collusion against a system which holds the test of everything to be its durability. (p. 90)

The explicit outlines of "Tea and Sympathy," so morally outrageous, do...