Limited Run

The Times switches critics

For the sixth time in 20 years, the dramatis personae at the New York Times theater department are being shuffled. Come September the curtain will fall on Richard Eder, 46, who in his two years as chief drama critic managed to pan several of Broadway's biggest hits, including Dracula, Deathtrap and Dancin'. His replacement is the paper's Sunday theater scribe Walter Kerr, 66, who joined the Times in 1966 after 15 years at the Herald Tribune, and is the only drama reviewer ever to win a Pulitzer Prize for criticism (1978). As head of the newly combined Sunday and daily theater staff, Kerr will contribute twice a month to the Sunday culture section and produce two reviews during the week.

The latest successor to Brooks Atkinson, the Times'near legendary daily critic, Kerr hopes to provide readers with critiques they "can understand, enjoy--if possible--and agree with after they've seen the show." Whether that will fortify the paper's waning influence on the Great White Way remains uncertain. Eder, a former foreign correspondent, will be assigned elsewhere at the Times, having rejected an offer from Executive Editor A.M. Rosenthal to play a supporting role to Kerr's lead in the theater section. Said Eder of his unexpectedly brief engagement: "I think my work is valuable and honest and would have liked it to go on. I feel bad at being offered a demotion." qed

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