It was with this play that I began to learn not to try to pin a play’s meaning down to a didactic theme. We used to do that in the Group; it was the essence of our work as directors. We were “teaching” the audience with each play. Clifford Odets felt it necessary in his third acts to grab the audience by their shoulders, shake them, and say, “Don’t you see what all this means? No? Well, I’ll tell you.” And he did. Now I preferred an opposite effort: to tell a story that was as human and, therefore, as ambivalent and as unresolved as life itself, so that the audience would leave the theatre asking, “I wonder what the hell all that means.” Which is the same experience one has in life, isn’t it? Or when reading a great novel. You can’t boil either down to a homily, motto, or slogan. Life is a puzzle, and you are generally left feeling: “How do people get through it?” and “If they’re both right, then who’s right?” and “God almighty, isn’t life awesome!” The emotion of wonder is better in the theatre than the emotion of recognition. Even Brecht in his so-called learning plays preserved an element of doubt unresolved. The audience should keep puzzling about a play long after they’ve left the theatre; when the play is worthy and the performance fine, an audience will ponder it for days. But if you sum it all up for them, they won’t. It’s precisely what happens after a dramatic experience in life—it unsettles you for a long time. You keep trying to puzzle it out.