The Theater: New Play in Manhattan, Nov. 21, 1955

A Hatful of Rain (by Michael V. Gazzo) concerns a drug addict. Young Johnny Pope picked up the habit while a hospitalized war veteran, shook it off, and now—with his wife expecting a child —is on the needle again. Tormented by his cravings, he is also tormented by the brutal, scrounging pushers who can supply the drugs. His well-meaning brother knows of his vice and has given him money for it; his unhappy wife does not know and can only blame some unknown woman for his neglect and his absences from home. Out of such a situation emerges a highly theatrical problem play.

Harrowingly effective at times, A Hatful of Rain yet proves an unsatisfying whole. For one thing, it has too many facets. Besides Johnny’s relation to himself and his wife, there is a complicated, rather confusing relationship with his father and brother. There is the moral question of his brother’s supplying Johnny with money, the personal question of his brother’s being in love with Johnny’s wife. Along with the problem of taking drugs, there is the problem of getting them. In other hands, this complex of elements might strengthen and deepen the story. But Playwright Gazzo is shakiest as a craftsman, and what might enrich only diffuses, what might add to the reality ends by subtracting from it.

With the help of good acting, the play has scenes of frightening power. But it highlights the behaviorism of junkies rather than the psychology, and ends up more a scare piece than a genuine study. Its naturalistic manner is drapery rather than flesh; it simply gives a New Look and a domestic air to melodrama. The melodrama itself is never stinted: the dope peddlers, for example, pay off as theater but bulk much too large for a serious problem play.

Ben Gazzara does a striking virtuoso job as Johnny, and Anthony Franciosa a rewarding one as his brother. But the top performance is Cinemactress Shelley Winters as the wife: she seems like some one honestly groping in a human drama rather than skillfully functioning in an uneven stage piece.