The New York Times championed the avant-garde production over the counterculture press.

Evidence

Sullivan didn’t much care for “the segment where the actors blurt out whatever has been bothering them that day—therapy for them, boring for us.” But in noting the extraordinary rapport between cast and audience, he declared the piece “as faithful a production as The Bacchae can have received since its original performances.” Not EVO but the Times outflanked the Voice in its appreciation of Dionsysus and, like Eliscu, the paper couldn’t stop talking about it. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 1244

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the usual assumption that the underground/alternative press led avant-garde appreciation ahead of mainstream papers — parallels the gentrification story where establishment institutions lead artists’ own institutions.