SOURCE: "Excitement, Satire, Speed," in The New Statesman and Nation, Vol. V, No. 99, January 14, 1933, pp. 41-2.

MacCarthy was an English essayist and critic. In the following review, he favorably assesses Dinner at Eight, noting its fast pace and well-drawn characters.

Dinner at Eight, at the Palace Theatre, by George Kaufman and Edna Ferber, both gifted authors (her novel, Show Boat was very superior to the popular play made from it), is an exceptionally animated performance: violent, unintermitted animation—that is the outcome and the aim of this ingenious mixture of ingredients, each of which is pungent enough to flavour for some palates the whole play. I can well imagine one playgoer declaring afterwards that Dinner at Eight is excruciatingly funny, and another, that it is excruciatingly painful. The fact is Dinner at Eight is both; it is extremely amusing and thoroughly remorseless; which of these aspects will predominate...