To the editors:
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It is a strange event when someone involved in theater feels compelled to rise to the defense of a critic, but the discussion that has been swirling around in your letters section [March 29 and April 26] regarding Mary Shen Barnidge and her review of Make Yer Bed and Lie seems to have enough energy packed into it to warrant a comment. For all Ms. Barnidge’s express frankness, she does reflect personal integrity within her reviews, and she can never be accused of equivocation, posturing, or insincerity in what she has to say about a performance or a play. Unlike the letter writers in question, she also generally refrains from personal attacks, even though she is far less kind to writers on the whole than she is to actors, whom she seems to genuinely support, in spite of whether a particular individual has or has not sought to “be polite to her.”
Name withheld
