SOURCE: "Miss Janie," in The New York Times, May 5, 1975, p. 243.

Barnes is an English-born American critic. In the mixed review below, he praises the intellectual and emotional appeal of The Taking of Miss Janie, but concludes that the play requires a sharper focus.

Just about five years ago Ed Bullins wrote a play called The Pig Pen, which was all about a mixed party in 1965, that took place the night Malcolm X was assassinated the night of the big divide between black and white. Now Mr. Bullins has produced The Taking of Miss Janie, which arrived last night at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater of the New York Shakespeare Festival. It is described by the author as "a sequel," and once again it is about the nineteen-sixties, pot and wine parties, blacks and whites not so much together, and the face of America's violence. But there is a...