I can't stand the Kaufman and Hart play The Man Who Came To Dinner. It's one of those "sparkling" comedies that was supposed to make the theatre so fun in the old days. Maybe it worked sixty years ago, but I find it excruciating to watch now. Not that the movie adaptation is bad. It's a well-made film, and capably acted by all save Monty Woolley, who, in the title role, is simply incompetent. Woolley couldn't act, thus his lines fall flat. His character, Sheridan Whiteside, is based on the famous columnist Alexander Woollcott, one of the wits of the famous Algonquin "round-table". When Whiteside breaks his leg he is compelled to spend time living in the home of the sort of provincial American family he despises. What's worse, he's in the Midwest, away from civilization (i.e. New York). He spends most of the play in a wheel-chair, railing against the mediocrity of everyone around him. There's potential for a good play in this, maybe even a great one, and perhaps George Bernard Shaw could have made something of the premise. Kaufman and Hart can't. In place of a battle of wits and ideas we get one-liners, a la Neil Simon, which instead of showing Whiteside's superiority merely reveal him as a snob and a bit of a mediocrity himself.
Review of The Man Who Came to Dinner
