SOURCE: Skinner, Richard Dana. Review of Four Saints in Three Acts, by Gertrude Stein. The Commonweal 19, no. 19 (9 March 1934): 525.

In the following review, Skinner discusses the writing style and casting decisions of the 1934 New York City production of Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts.

Deeply imbedded in the cryptograms of Gertrude Stein's alleged prose “cadences,” there is a consistent pattern binding together the many parts of Four Saints in Three Acts. Virgil Thomson's music, which is far from modernistic, and Miss Stein's libretto, which is so modern as to be almost psychopathic, would, of themselves and in combination mean little or nothing. But someone—whether Miss Stein, or Mr. Thomson, of John Houseman as director or Maurice Grosser as writer of the scenario—someone, I say, who must remain unidentified, has brought the semblance of order and design into the completed production.

We know that it was Mr. Thomson's...