SOURCE: Kauffmann, Stanley. “Stanley Kauffmann on Theater.” New Republic 162, no. 2894 (13 June 1970): 18, 31.

In the following excerpt, Kauffmann provides a somewhat unfavorable assessment of Lemon Sky, contending that it “accomplishes little.”

Three new off-Broadway productions [Colette, by Ellen Stewart; Lemon Sky, by Lanford Wilson; and The Me Nobody Knows, by Orpheum] underline a familiar truth: American performing is better than American writing. …

Christopher Walken [in Lemon Sky,] is a talented young actor at the other end of the spectrum from Miss Caldwell [cast as the title character in Colette] He doesn't have her technical virtuosity, and he has ambitions only towards realistic acting, even in the Shakespeare of his that I've seen. But, besides stage ease and easy charm, he has an unusual conviction of quintessence. In Lemon Sky he plays a late teenager (as well as the boy's older self), and we know at once that the core of...