SOURCE: "Oklahoma and the Riviera," in The Nation, New York, Vol. CXXXII, No. 3423, February 11, 1931, pp. 164-65.

Van Doren was a highly respected and prolific American poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright, editor, and critic. In the following review of Green Grow the Lilacs, he asserts that the play's predictability and lack of plot development allow the audience to focus on Riggs's use of the dialect of Oklahoma.

Much has been made of the novelty which Lynn Riggs slipped into Broadway through one of its many side doors when the Theater Guild last week put on his Indian Territory folk-play, Green Grow the Lilacs. … It was indeed a novelty, but I suspect that the discussion of it has for the most part lacked the proper emphasis. There has been a tendency, for instance, to say that Mr. Riggs with one puff blew artifice out of the theater, replacing it...