Thurber Carnival

James Thurber's most celebrated play, A Thurber Carnival, has amused audiences for over forty years with the wit of this author, artist and actor. The original production opened in the ANTA Theater in New York on February 26, 1960. The director of the play was Burgess Meredith and the cast included such actors as Paul Ford, Tom Ewell, and Peggy Cass. Brooks Atkinson, a New York Times columnist, wrote that the play's purpose was "to celebrate the literate lunacies of our civilization" and it held "a glorious world of meaningful nonsense." The humor found in A Thurber Carnival does not use large slapstick scenes to create guffaws but instead included situational comedy that encouraged giggling. In one of James Thurber's articles from the New York Times, "On the Quality of Mirth," he claimed that in a comedy the most important signs of a good show are "the appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth."

Seven months after the premier of the play James Thurber, the author, was able to play as James Thurber, the character, from "File and Forget." Louis Calta, columnist for the New York Times, wrote that "there were no evidences of nervousness and his timing was perfect."

Burgess Meredith and James Thurber received a Special Tony for recognition of A Thurber Carnival but there was no category for the award because, as New York's The Sun writer Frank Aston commented, the play "is neither a musical nor a review."