The Teahouse of the August Moon (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

Teahouse of the August Moon was first performed at the Martin Beck Theater in New York City in October 1953. A hit Broadway production, the first run lasted for over one thousand performances. A critical as well as popular success, the play earned Patrick many awards, including the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play of the Year, the Pulitzer Prize in drama, the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award, the Theatre Club Award, the Donaldson Award, and the Aegis Award, all in 1954.

Upon the initial production of Teahouse of the August Moon, New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson had nothing but praise for the play, which he labeled “a delightful comedy,” describing the overall production as “wonderful work.” In another review, Brooks asserted, “No one has any difficulty in falling in love with Teahouse of the August Moon.” He stated, “As a piece of theatre writing it is extraordinarily fresh,” adding, “the marriage of form and content is seldom as happy as it is in the case of this comedy.”

Atkinson favorably compared the original novel by Vern Sneider to the theatrical adaptation by Patrick, observing, “As a practiced theatre craftsman, Mr. Patrick has distilled the material [from the novel] into a headier comic stimulant.” Atkinson goes on to describe the improvement which Patrick’s play made upon the novel:

By eliminating details, sweetening the humor and sharpening the conflict between the wily natives and the naive captain, Mr. Patrick has made a pungent comedy with a tangible theme that delights everyone who distrusts military authority in civilian affairs. Mr. Sneider’s novel provides the basic material. Mr. Patrick, working on it with fresh relish, has made a fresh piece of writing out of it.

In a 1956 review in the New York Times, Atkinson affirmed that Teahouse of the August Moon “is still one of the funniest [plays] in recent years.” He described it as “a wise and original comedy,” which “is still a thorough-going delight.”

During the years 1954-1956, Teahouse of the August Moon was performed in major cities all over the globe, including London, Tokyo, Berlin, Moscow, Vienna, and Buenos Aires, as well as an amateur production on an American army base in Okinawa. In London, as elsewhere, theatre critics were especially delighted to learn that Americans were capable of poking fun at their own military exploits. Drew Middleton, in a New York Times review from London, wrote:

Almost every critic [in England] has remarked, in varied tones of surprise, that here is a play written by Americans which does not hesitate to josh such institutions as the United States Army, American womanhood and government policy.

Another New York Times review of the play’s reception in London noted,“Americans laughing at themselves is a welcome theme here.”

John Marion, in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, noted that Teahouse of the August Moon “has proved to be [Patrick’s] most durable work.” It was adapted to the screen by Patrick himself, in a 1956 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Production starring Marlon Brando as Sakini. In 1962, Patrick adapted Teahouse of the August Moon for television, in an NBC broadcast of “Hallmark Hall of Fame.”

In 1970, however, a musical rendition of Teahouse of the August Moon, written by Patrick and entitled Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen, closed after only sixteen nights on Broadway. According to Marion, the failure of the musical version was due to the fact that “Tensions during the Vietnam era made a comedy about Asians seem inappropriate.” In a New York Times review of Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen, Clive Barnes described it as “a strangely dated musical.”

Barnes asserted that even the original, non-musical version of Teahouse of the August Moon would not be worth reviving, for: “It is a little too cute, a little too coy, a little too patronizing to the defeated Asians.” He added, “Precisely geared for its time, it is now out of joint.” Soon after the failure of Lovely Ladies, Kind Gentlemen, Patrick essentially turned his back on Broadway, focusing his play writing for production by community theaters.

Marion summed up the scope of Patrick’s career in stating:

The success of John Patrick is ... a chart of the major trends in the American entertainment industry. Writing successfully for radio in its heyday, for Broadway, for big-budget movies of the 1950s, and finally for the emerging regional and community theatres throughout the country, Patrick will be remembered as a superb craftsman of popular comedies.

However, given the current climate in the United States of increased sensitivity to cultural stereotyping in the media, it seems unlikely that Teahouse of the August Moon — the premise, characters, and dialogue of which are firmly grounded on some of the most common and offensive Western stereotypes about Asian culture — will enjoy renewed popularity any time soon.