[To] tell you the truth social significance is dear to my heart. But then so are songs, and I take the perhaps old-fashioned attitude that the first duty of a musical is to be musical…. I am writing about "Now Is the Time for All Good Men."… The news is not exactly good.

[The show] was terrible….

[Perhaps] if the book had been stronger … the musical would have been more compelling. Oddly enough, the ideas behind the musical are good—this is where the social significance comes in. For a teacher, who has served jail for refusing to kill in Vietnam, comes to a high school in the wilds of Indiana and teaches the kids about Thoreau and civil disobedience. I Courtesy of Martin Tudor Productionswarmed to him, and to the young widow he wooed with hard words and high ideals.

Yet characters are not plays any...