ALL RIGHTEE

All Rightee proves yet again that the world of the theater is for the all ookie-- at least to the ""insider"" author. Mr. Hayes ought to know. He has an English background that includes the legitimate stage, films, radio, television and one other novel devoted to acting (The Comedy Man, 1961, p. 121). Mr. Hayes writes of the vicious, petty and nymphoid who strut through the trial run of a young playwright's increasingly corrupted play. An occasional satiric dart, aimed low at this most often hacked at of subjects, supports the author's reputation for the cutting comic line-- but not often and sharply enough to bring the ""outsider"" in. Briefly, the playwright Crewe Cutts goes from nowhere to failure all for the price of a ticket to his own play which, in the hands of the arch-typical producer-villain, predatory stars and starlets becomes not his own work of art but a mishmash projected at the unlovely man of the mass audience. Having labored so mightily against deadening odds in a treadmill factory job to write the play, it seems odd-- and never is made clear-- just why Crewe Cutts has no recourse against the vulgarity that comes from all sources to distort his work or why the self-discipline that helped him to write abandons him in his dealings with play doctors and grande dames. His attempts to fight insanity with insanity just aren't certifiable enough for the American box office.