Dramatic Critic : Selected Reviews (1922-1939)

Charles Morgan was the dramatic critic of The Times for most of the years between 1922 and 1939.

The reviews for this small selection are taken from thousands written for The Times and from his weekly articles for the New York Times on the London theatre. Morgan was widely regarded as the most influential critic of his day. His fellow critic, James Agate, wrote 'When Morgan is on form he has us all beat.' Though most were written overnight for the following day’s paper, they were given space allowed to no modern critic.

Beautifully written, they bring to life many of the great actors and actresses and the dramatists, old and new, as the theatre moved from the frivolous Twenties into the shadow of another war and towards the modern theatre of today. As they mirror the development of English theatrical taste in the inter-war years, they are as much a delight to read, both witty and erudite, as they are an important historical record.

Charles Langbridge Morgan (22 January 1894 – 6 February 1958), was an English-born playwright and novelist of English and Welsh parentage. The main themes of his work were romantic love, mysticism, and a longing for the timeless and sublime through telling the stories of idealistic and artistic protagonists.
Morgan was born in Bromley, Kent. He was educated at the Naval Colleges of Osborne and Dartmouth and served as a midshipman in the China Fleet until 1913, when he returned to England to take the entrance examinations for Oxford. On the outbreak of war he rejoined the navy but was sent with Churchill's Naval Division to the defence of Antwerp. He was interned in Holland which provided the setting for his best-selling novel The Fountain.
His first play, The Flashing Stream (1938), had successful runs in London and Paris. The River Line (1952) was originally written as a novel in 1949 and concerned the activities of escaped British prisoners of war in France during World War II.
He was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1936, a promotion in 1945, and was elected a member of the Institut de France in 1949. From 1953 he was the president of International PEN.