Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Peacock Tynanwas an English theatre critic and writer. Making his initial impact as a critic at The Observer, he praised Osborne's Look Back in Anger, and encouraged the emerging wave of British theatrical talent. In 1963, Tynan was appointed as the new National Theatre Company's literary manager...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionCritic
Date of Birth2 April 1927
coward exactly fifty mean sort youngest
Even the youngest of us will know, in fifty years' time, exactly what we mean by 'a very Noel Coward sort of person'.
dramatist instincts
A dramatist is a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom.
forty might pan peter slightly wholly
Forty years ago, he was Slightly in Peter Pan, and you might say that he has been wholly in Peter Pan ever since.
secret neurosis sanity
A neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping.
theatre instinct peeping
Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom and I will show you the making of a dramatist.
integrity doe way
How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.
indulge-in luxury despair
I attacked those Western playwrights who use their influence and affluence to preach to the world the nihilistic doctrine that life is pointless and irrationally destructive, and that there is nothing we can do about it. Until everyone is fed, clothed, housed and taught, until human beings have equal leisure to contemplate the overwhelming fact of mortality, we should not (I argued) indulge in the luxury of "privileged despair.
oysters pearls disease
Pearl is a disease of oysters. Levant is a disease of Hollywood.
theatre world connections
No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.
vulnerable gregarious gifted
Everyone is vulnerable who is at once gifted and gregarious.
casting bergman vengeful
The vengeful hag is played by Ingrid Bergman, which is like casting Eleanor Roosevelt as Lizzie Borden.
rivals england sophisticated
William Congreve is the only sophisticated playwright England has produced; and like Shaw, Sheridan, and Wilde, his nearest rivals, he was brought up in Ireland.