SOURCE: Messenger, Ann P. “More Utile Than Dulce.” Canadian Literature, no. 65 (summer 1975): 90-95.

In the following excerpt, Messenger briefly recounts the flaws in the original production of Walsh, but enthusiastically praises Pollock's rewrites and changes in script and finds the restructured Walsh an excellent and moving historical play.

A play is a slice of life—any slice, whether it be the thick wedge carved for himself by the historian, the neatly trimmed piece of the sociologist, the oblique cut of the psychologist, or any of the variously shaped chunks chiselled off by other students of human experience. What matters is how well the dramatist transforms his chosen slice into something that reaches out from the stage to the minds and hearts of the audience in order to raise their consciousness (or conscience) or to tickle their fancy—in the classic formula, to instruct or delight. The four recent...