Finding influences "from Pirandello to Jean Genet," Simon offers a favorable review of Behan 's play.

Of the five productions I am about to review, two were superior, one fair, and two poor. There would be nothing remarkable about this breakdown which is just what one would expect the law of averages and Broadway to produce, except for the interesting coincidence that the two good productions were, in their fashion, improvisations; that the middling one was the work of an established, respected playwright; and that the inadequate pair were both adaptations of not exactly choice novels. And as it so often happens with coincidences, this one has nothing coincidental about it. ...

The reviewers who were vying with one another to find the source of Brendan Behan's The Hostage (with Brecht, I believe, getting the largest number of votes) were no less misguided than those who, sighing or...