SOURCE: A review of Porgy, in The Saturday Review of Literature, Vol. 4, No. 14, October 29, 1927, pp. 251-52.

In the following review, Sayler assesses the stage version of Porgy, lauding the "rhythmic" qualities of the production and declaring it superior to the novel on which it was based.

None of the expedients which the theatre vouchsafes to drama as oral and visualized literature is more constructive and fecund than rhythm. Without denying the presence of this most richly interpretive esthetic medium in the other arts in varying degree, I do not think it presumptuous to claim for the theatre a wider range of rhythmic opportunity than literature or music, painting or sculpture, can afford. Perhaps the most stimulating occasion in several seasons for the study of the operation of this rhythmic function of the theatre is provided in the production at the Guild Theatre of Porgy, a dramatization by Dorothy...