The Theater: New Plays in Manhattan, Nov. 17, 1952

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Seldom has more exotically flavored fruit dropped off the tree of the knowledge of good & evil. The odd thing is that it hasn't a more satisfying taste. Well staged by Mr. Hart and obviously written with seriousness and care, Climate has interesting scenes and characters, striking turns of behavior and speech. One reason for its lack of sustained interest may be that it tackles too much for one evening—a family, a community, a philosophy, a man's rehabilitation, a girl's turning a corner into adolescence. A weightier reason may be that Climate demands literary rather than dramatic treatment; the story needs style to lace it together, and a prevailingly comic stance. Equally, without the attendant irony of Mittelholzer's book, there emerges too sentimental a back-to-nature philosophy, too pretty a cure. After all, despite its climate, Eden racked up quite a tally of disobedience, sin and crime.

In any case, the book resists transplantation in the theater much as did a somewhat comparable one, The Innocent Voyage. Climate fleetingly rates such adjectives as fresh, vivid or taut. The trouble is that they just come & go where they should meet and join hands.