SOURCE: Brustein, Robert. “Junkies and Jazz.” New Republic 141, no. 13 (28 September 1959): 29–30.

In the following review, Brustein praises the authenticity and the theatricality of The Living Theatre's production of The Connection.

When you enter the off-Broadway theater where The Connection is playing in repertory, you have a few moments before the action begins to formulate your expectations. The curtain is drawn, and on the stage some excessively seedy characters are arranged in various attitudes of weariness and gloom. The setting is a tawdry tenement, the furniture is delapidated, the quarters cramped and dirty. Painted on the wall upstage is a crudely executed pyramid, a revivalist motto, and a huge disembodied eye; hanging from the flies is a single green lightbulb. The play, you have been informed, is about drug addiction. The subject is unpromising; and Lower Depths naturalism, it appears, is to be the inevitable treatment. Yet, something is not...