Kenneth Tynan made his reputation in England while still an undergraduate at Oxford. His remarkably acute prose for THE LONDON OBSERVER helped to brand an entire generation of postwar British drama: the plays of the "Angry Young Man." In addition, he championed writers like Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett and idolized such actors as Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson. Olivier made him the literary manager of the National Theatre in 1963, a post Tynan served in for six years. From 1958 to 1960, he had a spell as guest critic at THE NEW YORKER, profiting from that magazine's generosity of space and rigor of style to create his best prose. Producer David Merrick tried to get Tynan banned from covering the theater. But the most memorable review he wrote during that time, for all his combative radicalism, was of the Broadway musical ''Gypsy'' (''tapers off from perfection in the first half to mere brilliance in the second''), and his best single line, his characterization of ''Flower Drum Song'' as Rodgers and Hammerstein's answer to ''The World of Suzie Wong'' -(''a world of woozy song''). photo credits: Photofest