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May 24, 2017

How long should it take to write a political play? I don’t mean to ask how speedily it should be written — though if I did, Robert Schenkkan’s “Building the Wall” would surely win a prize. It was drafted, Mr. Schenkkan told The New York Times, in a weeklong “white-hot fury” after the election of President Trump in November, and has already been produced, or will be imminently, at theaters around the country. Here in New York, it opened on Wednesday at New World Stages, where I found it to be slick and dispiriting.

But put that aside for a moment. What I really mean to ask is how long it takes for a specific political situation to become ripe for dramatization. Eager critics, and audiences, too, now seem to be asking for a turnaround that all but prohibits introspection. Yet without introspection, how valuable is the result? It is a very rare political work that speaks directly to its time from its time, and also deeply and lastingly. “The Normal Heart” and “Angels in America” come to mind.

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