[All Summer Long] revolves around the failure of an American family to save its home, because of listlessness and disorientation…. It would have been difficult to find a more intelligent and sensitive playwright for the assignment of dramatizing Donald Wetzel's A Wreath and a Curse, the novel upon which All Summer Long was based. Nobody familiar with Tea and Sympathy could doubt that Robert Anderson would make sensitive drama out of the tensions of these confused young characters who receive little sympathy, guidance, or encouragement from their bumbling elders…. (p. 289)

A just appraisal of Robert Anderson's second Broadway work must distribute praise and blame. Praise should be given to some excellent details of characterization and feeling; blame to laboriousness in underscoring the lesson and for a general mildness of action and characterization. An excellent argument may be advanced against the requirement of an exciting plot, but only if...