RABE, David (William) 1940-

PERSONAL: Born March 10, 1940, in Dubuque, IA; son of William (a meatpacker) and Ruth (a department store worker; maiden name, McCormick) Rabe; married Elizabeth Pan (a laboratory technician), 1969 (marriage ended); married Jill Clayburgh (an actress), March, 1979; children: (first marriage) Jason; (second marriage) Michael, Lily. Education: Loras College, B.A., 1962; Villanova University, M.A., 1968.

ADDRESSES: Office—Grove/Atlantic Monthly Press, 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. Agent—United Talent Agency, 9560 Wilshire Blvd., 5th Floor, Beverly Hills, CA 90212.

CAREER: Playwright. Worked various jobs, 1963-65; New Haven Register, New Haven, CT, feature writer, 1969-70; Villanova University, Villanova, PA, assistant professor, 1970-72, consultant, beginning 1972. Military service: U.S. Army, 1965-67; served in Vietnam.

MEMBER: Philadelphia Rugby Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Rockefeller grant, 1967; Associated Press Award, 1970, for series of articles written on Daytop addict rehabilitation program; Obie Award for distinguished playwriting from Village Voice, Drama Desk Award, and Drama Guild Award, all 1971, all for The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel; Elizabeth Hull-Kate Warriner Award from Dramatists Guild, 1971, Variety poll award, 1971, Outer Circle Award, 1972, and Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for best play

of 1971-72 season on Broadway, 1972, all for Sticks and Bones; New York Drama Critics Circle citation, 1972; Antoinette Perry Award Nominations for best play, 1974, for Boom Boom Boom and 1985, for Hurlyburly; Antoinette Perry Award Nominations for best play, New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best American play, 1976, for Streamers; National Institute and American Academy Award in Literature, 1976; Guggenheim fellowship, 1976.

WRITINGS:

plays

Chameleon, produced at Loras College, Dubuque, IA, 1959.

Two Plays by David Rabe (contains Sticks and Bones; also see below; two-act, produced in New York at Anspacher Theatre, November 7, 1971, produced on Broadway at John Golden Theatre, August 1, 1972; and The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel; also see below; first produced in New York at Newman Stage of The Public Theatre, May 20, 1971), Viking (New York, NY), 1973, published as The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones: Two Plays, Penguin (New York, NY), 1978.

The Orphan (also see below), produced in New York at Anspacher Theatre, April 18, 1973, revised version published as The Orphan: A Play in Two Acts, Samuel French (New York, NY), 1975.

In the Boom Boom Room (also see below; three-act; produced on Broadway at Vivian Beaumont Theatre, November 8, 1973), Knopf (New York, NY), 1975, revised edition with a note by the author (produced in New York, 1986), Grove Press (New York, NY), 1986.

Burning, produced in New York, 1974.

Streamers (also see below; produced in New Haven, CT, at Long Wharf Theater, 1976; produced on Broadway at Mitzi Newhouse Theater, 1976), Knopf (New York, NY), 1977.

Goose and Tomtom (produced in New York, 1982), Grove Press (New York, NY), 1986.

Hurlyburly (also see below; three-act; produced in New York, 1984); Grove Press (New York, NY), 1985, revised edition (produced in Los Angeles, 1988), Grove Weidenfeld (New York, NY), 1990.

Sticks and Bones: A Play in Two Acts, Samuel French (New York, NY), 1972, revised edition, 1987.

Those the River Keeps, (produced in Princeton, NJ, 1991), Grove Weidenfeld (New York, NY), 1991, published as Those the River Keeps: A Drama in Two Acts, Samuel French (New York, NY), 1994, published with Hurlyburly as Those the River Keeps and Hurlyburly: Two Plays, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1995.

The Vietnam Plays, Volume 1: The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel [and] Sticks and Bones, Volume 2: Streamers [and] The Orphan, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1993.

A Question of Mercy: Based upon the Journal by Richard Selzer, (produced off-Broadway, 1997), Dramatists Play Service (New York, NY), 1998.

The Dog Problem, produced by the Atlantic Theater Company, New York, NY, 2001.

Also author of The Crossing (one-act).

screenplays, except as noted

I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can, Paramount, 1982.

Streamers (adapted from his play), United Artists, 1983.

Casualties of War, Columbia, 1989.

(With Dennis McIntyre) State of Grace, Orion, 1990.

(With Robert Towne and David Rayfiel) The Firm (screenplay), Paramount, 1993.

Recital of the Dog (novel), Grove Press (New York, NY), 1993.

The Crossing Guard (novelization of the screenplay by Sean Penn), Hyperion Press (Westport, CT), 1995.

Hurlyburly (adapted from his play), Fine Line Features, 1998.

In the Boom Boom Room (adapted from his play), 1999.

A collection of Rabe's manuscripts is housed at the Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University.

SIDELIGHTS: David Rabe tackles difficult issues such as war, drug abuse, and misogyny in plays filled with lyrical language, profanities, black humor, and alienated characters. Works such as Sticks and Bones, In the Boom Boom Room, and Hurlyburly portray the playwright's dark view of American life, played out "within a series of metaphoric arenas—living rooms, military barracks, disco bars—where his characters collide violently against each other, but where, primarily, they struggle with their own society-fostered delusions," wrote Mark W. Estrin in Contemporary Dramatists. Rabe's most acclaimed works usually feature intense confrontation. He has proven his willingness to experiment with various theatrical formats, and according to Dictionary of Literary Biography writer James A. Patterson, "He blends humor and fear expertly and shows no tendency toward sentimentality."

Rabe was born to a middle-class family in Iowa. During high school, he was involved in sports and band, and he also began writing poetry and short stories. He was offered a football scholarship to Loras College in Dubuque, but majored in English instead, and became involved with the campus theater company. His first play, Chameleon, was performed on the campus in 1959. He also contributed to the campus literary magazine, winning several prizes for poetry and short stories. After earning his bachelor's degree in 1962, he went to Villanova University to work on a master's degree in theater, but he dropped out of the program (he later completed it) and was drafted into the army in 1965.

Rabe's army training and deployment to Vietnam were at first viewed by him as little more than an adventure. He did not take part in combat, but worked as a support person for a military hospital unit. At one point he tried to get a transfer to a combat unit, until the true horror of the killing struck him. He also discovered that he was unable to write while there, even though he felt he should. The experience itself was too horrible to amplify it by writing about it.

When Rabe was discharged after two years of duty, he came home to begin a very productive writing period. Drafts of four plays and one novel were all completed within one year. He returned to Villanova to finish his master's degree on a fellowship, and the university became a favored spot for him to try out new works. In 1969 Rabe married Elizabeth Pan, and soon after they moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where he worked at a newspaper, writing theater reviews and articles on subjects such as conscientious objectors and drug rehabilitation programs.

Rabe set about trying to get his drama professionally produced, sending copies of The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel to several directors and theater agencies, including Joseph Papp at the Public Theater, a multi-stage venue in New York. Papp was enthusiastic about the play and arranged for its production. It was an immediate hit, and ran for 363 performances, winning Rabe several prestigious awards. Critical response was also generally positive. When Sticks and Bones joined Pavlo Hummel on one of the Public's stages in 1971, Rabe became the only playwright, other than Shakespeare, to have two plays performed concurrently at that theater. Pavlo Hummel is told in both realistic and surrealistic flashbacks. The play opens with the death of the title character, killed by a grenade thrown by a fellow soldier. Flashbacks relate his army life up until that point. Sticks and Bones and another play from that era, Streamers, also deal with the war and its effects. While the plays seemed to many to carry a strong anti-war sentiment, Rabe has consistently objected that he sought only to portray the reality of war, not to make any kind of political statement.

Rabe's thrust on the American family in Sticks and Bones is made apparent by the names of his main characters: Ozzie, Harriet, David, and Rick, the names of the family in the long-running, wholesome television series Ozzie and Harriet. In contrast to the security provided by Harriet's fudge, Ozzie's possessions, and Rick's guitar, David, when he speaks, reminds his family of the atrocities of Vietnam or his love for a "yellow girl." Henry Hewes gave this interpretation of the play's end: "Since David is unchangeable, the family must get rid of him and the memories he brought from the war. They do this by strangling the personification of the Vietnamese girl, who has been silently appearing throughout the play, and by helping David to kill himself. But the suggestion at the end of the play is that David will not entirely die, and that America will never quite exorcise the ghosts of Vietnam."

Variety described Sticks and Bones as "wordy and repetitious," suffering from the inarticulateness of its hero. Despite these reservations, the reviewer praised the "shattering impact" of Rabe's play—"a work of passion by a gifted writer." Clive Barnes cited "this interestingly flawed play" as being "far less confident in its style and texture" than Pavlo Hummel, stating Rabe's inexperience must "take the rap" for "the occasionally ponderous symbolism." Nonetheless, continued Barnes, Sticks and Bones"has a moral force that neither flinches nor sermonizes. This is surely all too unusual in our theater."

In The Orphan, Rabe reworked the myth of Oresteia, examining issues of fate and destiny. The characters of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and Orestes are juxtaposed with modern characters who testify about their experiences in Vietnam and with the Manson family. It is, wrote Carla J. McDonough in Dictionary of Literary Biography, "a rather jolting mix of contemporary and classical characters, dress, speech, and events." More experimental, as well as less controlled and sophisticated than his earlier plays, The Orphan was also less successful, closing after only fifty-three performances. Rabe's next play, In the Boom Boom Room, was not an immediate hit, but has become one of the most enduring works in his oeuvre. The story revolves around Chrissy, a young woman who wants to be a serious dancer, but who goes from dancing in a nightclub to a topless bar during the course of the play. Memories of physical and sexual abuse well up in her, and conditions in the club are metaphors for the meanness of life. Chrissy's relationships are destructive and unsuccessful. McDonough commented that "ultimately it seems to have no strong focus other than the message that without love, a person's life is hellacious." This was Rabe's first play to feature a female character. Commonweal reviewer Gerald Weales explained that "although much of In the Boom Boom Room is overextended and overexplained, at his best Rabe has an oblique style which is attractive because it suggests more than it defines, because it opens the audience to possibility."

Rabe returned to the backdrop of war and again found award-winning acclaim with Streamers in 1976. The barracks room set in a Virginia army camp functioned as a microcosm for the racial, sexual, and social tension in American society. Richie, a homosexual, Roger, an African American, and Billy, a professed homophobe, manage to adjust to each other's personalities, only to be stirred up by Carlyle, a new recruit whose anger affects them all. Weales found that in Streamers (the "most realistic of the Rabe plays") "it is obvious that Billy's interfering impulses, his failure to understand Richie or Carlyle, the violence hidden in his angry innocence provide a workable analogy for the American presence in Southeast Asia." And yet, he continued, "Rabe clearly does not intend that his play should have a narrowly political reference." It is, the reviewer felt, a play about a "world … in which, eventually, everyone's parachute refuses to open."

Rabe's next play, Goose and Tomtom, has ranked as one of his least successful works. The title characters are a pair of paranoid jewel thieves, living under the thrall of Lorraine, a streetwalker with plans to rule the world. Early in the play, Lorraine sticks pins into the arms of Goose and Tomtom to see which one is tougher. Both are so afraid of her that they never remove the pins, which become a running gag. New York Times reviewer Mel Gussow characterized Goose and Tomtom as a "vaudeville turn;" writing in the same newspaper, Wilborn Hampton termed the play "peculiar and slight." Gussow did give Rabe credit for trying something new, acknowledging that "one has to honor the attempt of a talented artist to break out of his mode," but he considered it "necessary to acknowledge the fact that 'Goose and Tomtom' lacks a light touch" and concluded that it "could be considered a long-delayed exploding cigar, a slow burn followed by a single anticlimactic pop."

Hampton felt Goose and Tomtom had more serious flaws than simply not being funny enough. In his view, the play "works much too hard at trying to be shocking and violent. As a result, any dark humor is dissipated in its predictability." Warning that "throughout the play there is a lot of whacking and torture," he further noted, "what is missing in all this mayhem is any kind of focus," concluding, "the whole exercise, whether viewed as a comedic analysis of the decline of Western society or just as a spoof … is pointless."

New York contributor John Simon went so far as to say, "After Goose and Tomtom, I feared not just for David Rabe's talent, but even for his sanity." But he announced that Rabe redeemed himself with his next drama, the highly-praised Hurlyburly. Hurlyburly is set in Hollywood, and its chief characters are all men involved in the film industry. The action, such as it is, involves their drinking, drug abuse, loveless sex, and shallow philosophizing. Their talk goes on so incessantly that Rabe included lines such as "blah-blahblah" and "rapateeta" to symbolize its meaninglessness. Although there is a great deal of humor in the play, it is really concerned with the breakdown of morals in modern society, as epitomized in Southern California. "The picture of Hollywood is bleak," observed Clive Barnes in the New York Post. "Zombie denizens seem preoccupied…'with pharmaceutical experiments testing the parameters of the American dream.'" Barnes summed up: "Rabe has written a strange, bitterly funny, self-indulgent, important play…. I was entertained, horrified, intrigued, and disturbed by Hurlyburly."

Robert Brustein analyzed the play's theme in depth in the New Republic. "What the play is about, I believe, is how the disintegration of American values has created a sense of anomie and a pronounced loss of purpose. Rabe's metaphor for this is cocaine." He further noted that Hurlyburly showed some marked stylistic changes from the playwright's earlier work—changes that in his opinion lifted Rabe's work to a new level. "Like [Eugene] O'Neill, who achieved greatness only when he adopted an unadorned Ibsenian realism, Rabe's style is now informed by the implicit verismo of David Mamet rather than the tendentious exhortations of Arthur Miller…. Besides displaying a dazzling new technique—not just a flawless command of dialogue, but an improved understanding of the nuances of human conflict—he has documented a chronicle of post-Vietnam War American life as pieced together from the shards of our shattered beliefs. Probing the social-metaphysical secrets revealed to only the most visionary playwrights, he has correctly seen that the plague of cocaine, which has infected virtually the entire entertainment industry, is less a disease than a symptom of a much larger malaise that is infecting virtually the entire country, thus giving us insights into our fall from grace, if not into our capacity for redemption."

Not all critics were as wholehearted in their praise of Hurlyburly, however. New York Times reviewer Frank Rich wrote that the first half of the play "offers some of Mr. Rabe's most inventive and disturbing writing," but he added that "it crash lands at midpoint." "Mr. Rabe remains a dynamic chronicler of the brutal games that eternally adolescent American men can play," Rich went on. "When his buddies aren't assaulting one another, they're on search-and-destroy missions against the No. 1 enemy—the women they invariably refer to as 'broads,' 'ghouls,' 'bitches' or worse." Rich remarked that the play fails when it attempts to show its characters' softer sides. "The ensuing revelations aren't terribly revealing," he wrote, "and the tributes to the tough guys' previously hidden vulnerability are banal…. This is a paltry, amorphous payoff to the strong buildup."

Other reviewers, such as Newsweek's Jack Kroll, had no reservations about calling Hurlyburly a virtual masterpiece. Kroll called it "a powerful permanent contribution to American drama" and "a challenging work. Starting out as a tough, funny play about some Hollywood wise guys, it swerves, darts and drives deep into a darkness shot through with the emergency lights of anxiety and despair….The climax, with its casual, nutty, almost comedic violence, has a frightening inevitability. Rabe's vision of the wasteland may not be impeccably structured, but it has a savage sincerity and a crackling theatrical vitality…. This deeply felt play deserves as wide an audience as possible." Rabe later adapted the play as a successful motion picture.

One of Hurlyburly's characters, the self-destructive, emotional, would-be actor Phil, became the center of Rabe's next play, Those the River Keeps. This drama shows Phil in the years before the events of Hurlyburly. Having cut his ties with the East Coast mafia, Phil runs to California to realize his dream of acting, but he cannot escape the guilt he feels over his past crimes. When an old mobster associate shows up and urges Phil to join him on a hit mission, Phil is unable to turn him away. Rabe explained the major themes and metaphor of the title to Francis X. Clines of the New York Times:"Are there wounds in the past so strong that they'll pull you back no matter what you do? How do they seep into you unconsciously in indirect ways where you think you're doing one thing but really doing something else? What's the cut-off point where you can't get out?" Those the River Keeps was less well received than its predecessor. Christian Science Monitor contributor April Austin noted that "Phil's constant harping on the fact that life is essentially meaningless gets tiresome…. Rabe needs to trim chunks of the dialogue, or risk turning off the audience he has wooed into Phil's corner." Variety critic Jeremy Gerard wrote, "Yet it's also true that, like David Mamet (his stylistic opposite), Rabe hears poetry in the stuttering attempts of ordinary people trying to connect." Austin allowed, however, that the play "is powered by funny and pugnacious one-liners. It's mostly the put-down kind of humor, but it's a welcome break from Phil's self-absorption….It's an interesting, if not thoroughly engrossing, piece of theater."

Rabe drew on the experience of his Vietnam plays when he wrote the screenplay for the film Casualties of War. The film, which Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers called "flawed but overwhelming," is based on a 1969 nonfiction article about a squad of American soldiers who were court-martialed for kidnapping, gang-raping, and then murdering a Vietnamese girl. The one member of the squad who did not participate in the rape and murder was a new arrival, Sven Ericksson, who later testified against the others. "The piece, published soon after in book form under the title Casualties of War," Travers continued, "was both grim truth and a devastating metaphor for American imperialism." Some critics, however, felt that the film did not live up to the potential of either the director or the screenwriter. "In [Rabe's] screenplay all the characters seem familiar, not from life but from previous films or plays or novels," stated New Republic film reviewer Stanley Kauffman; "all of them are pushed around like charade figures to symbolize Quality A in conflict with Quality B. Following the story is less like watching a drama unfold than like watching a recipe being filled, a cup of bitterness, a spoonful of lust, a dash of remorse, etc." "Rabe champions the real Ericksson's point of view, which insists upon moral responsibility but which contradicts the film's social determinism," explained Gavin Smith in Film Comment. "A troubled discrepancy lies at this intersection of psychosocial behaviorism and humanist moralism that prevents the film from fully articulating a coherent point of view."

Rabe also was the coauthor of the screenplay adaptation of John Grisham's novel The Firm. New York movie critic David Denby described the film version of the story as "exciting, well acted, and smartly written, but I find myself in the bizarre position of asking for a trashier approach." Denby believed that the film, by trying to insert a sense of morality in Grisham's amoral novel, succeeded only in making The Firm feel "priggish and self-deluded." "The movie tries to produce real emotions and even, God help us, a few real people," Denby explained. "The way [director Sydney] Pollack and company have adapted the material, it no longer makes sense. The movie retains Grisham's pop structure but denies the audience a pop payoff." "Sometimes you can't fight the power of pop; you just have to go with it," he concluded. "Instead, Pollack and his crew have turned a terrific piece of escapist fiction into an earnest seminar on the dangers of greed."

Rabe is also the author of two novels: Recital of the Dog, an original story, and The Crossing Guard, a novelization of the screenplay of the movie by Sean Penn. Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Erika Taylor called the latter book "interesting to read," and concluded that "by the end of 'The Crossing Guard,' Rabe fully inhabits his sad, emotionally complex novel." New York Times Book Review critic Randall Short, while acknowledging Rabe's status as "one of America's most distinguished playwrights [and] the possessor of a passionate moral imagination," felt that Rabe is out of his element in writing fiction rather than plays. He called the former book "uncomfortably reminiscent of a world-class pianist trying to impress his admirers by playing the violin." "It isn't that Mr. Rabe has difficulty with the form of the novel," New York Times contributor Michiko Kakutani wrote. "It's that he has abandoned the galvanic language and dark, sympathetic humor that made his finest plays so powerful and affecting."

More favorably reviewed was Rabe's A Question of Mercy, a dramatic adaptation of a 1991 New York Times Magazine essay by Richard Selzer. The subject was whether or not a doctor should help a terminally ill patient commit suicide. In Rabe's play, Dr. Chapman is called upon by Thomas, a man whose lover, Anthony, is dying of AIDS. Chapman narrates the play and ponders aloud the questions he confronts as he deals with the two men. Back Stage Web site reviewer Victor Gluck stated that the play is "riveting, not depressing, because it is about active choices and their consequences. It makes the viewer examine euthanasia in a whole new light." New York Times writer Ben Brantley noted that the writing demonstrates "elegance, discipline, restraint, not traits habitually associated with the author." McDonough observed, "The play explores the moral and emotional dilemmas without preaching, a trap that Rabe has fallen into in the past." Robert L. Daniels described the worth of A Question of Mercy, writing in Variety: "With unsettling candor and disturbing insight, the play arouses pity and understanding of a troubling subject."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Beidler, Philip D., American Literature and the Experience of Vietnam, University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1982, pp. 85-136, 137-192.

Contemporary Dramatists, 6th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 4, 1975; Volume 8, 1978; Volume 33, 1985.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 7: Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, 1981, Volume 228: Twentieth-Century American Dramatists, second series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2000.

Hughes, Catharine, Plays, Politics and Polemics, Drama Book Specialists (New York, NY), 1973.

Kolin, Philip C., David Rabe: A Stage History and a Primary and Secondary Bibliography, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1988.

Simon, John, Uneasy Stages: A Chronicle of the New York Theater, 1963-73, Random House (New York, NY), 1975.

Zinman, Toby Silverman, David Rabe: A Casebook, Garland Publishing (New York, NY), 1991.

periodicals

After Dark, August, 1972.

America, May 15, 1976.

American Theatre, July-August, 1997, Stephanie Coen, interview with David Rabe, p. 22.

Atlantic, December, 1976.

Austin American-Statesman (Austin, TX), January 15, 1999, review of Hurlyburly, p. E3.

Back Stage, March 7, 1997, David Sheward, review of A Question of Mercy, p. 52; July 6, 2001, Julius Novick, review of The Dog Problem, p. 40; July 27, 2001, Victor Gluck, review of A Question of Mercy, p. 31; February 15, 2002, Jeannette Toomer, review of In the Boom Boom Room, p. 54.

Back Stage West, December 4, 1997, Kerry Reid, review of Hurlyburly, p. 22; February 11, 1999, Madeleine Shaner, review of Streamers, p. 15; May 20, 1999, David-Edward Hughes, review of A Question of Mercy, p. 21; July 20, 2000, Brad Schreiber, review of Question of Mercy, p. 30.

Boston Globe, July 18, 1990, p. 66; May 11, 1993, p. 29.

Chicago Tribune, August 1, 1985, section 5, p. 7; February 24, 1987, section 5, p. 5; March 7, 1991, section 1, p. 28; February 7, 1993, section 14, p. 6.

Christian Science Monitor, May 17, 1993, p. 12; February 8, 1994, p. 12.

Commentary, July, 1976.

Commonweal, December 14, 1973; May 21, 1976.

Critical Quarterly, spring, 1982, pp. 73-82.

Cue, December 4, 1971; December 3, 1973.

Entertainment Weekly, December 8, 1995, p. 63; January 8, 1999, review of Hurlyburly, p. 44.

Film Comment, July-August, 1989, p. 49.

Interview, March, 1993, p. 84.

Library Journal, September 1, 1995, p. 209.

Los Angeles, January, 1989, p. 190; January, 1993, p. 125.

Los Angeles Times, February 6, 1985, section 6, p. 7; January 27, 1988, section 6, p. 6; November 17, 1988, section 6, p. 1; December 8, 1988, section 6, p. 1; December 11, 1988, p. C53; April 6, 1995, p. F10; September 20, 1995, p. F5.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, April 4, 1993, p. 7; December 10, 1995.

Nation, November 26, 1973; December 3, 1973; May 8, 1976; May 14, 1977.

National Review, August 9, 1993, p. 63.

New Republic, May 26, 1973; December 1, 1973; June 12, 1976; August 6, 1984, pp. 27-29; October 2, 1989, p. 26.

Newsday, March 2, 1972.

Newsweek, December 20, 1971; February 23, 1976; July 2, 1984, pp. 65, 67.

New York, September 17, 1973; July 16, 1984, pp. 42-45; July 12, 1993, p. 53; March 10, 1997, John Simon, review of A Question of Mercy, p. 52.

New Yorker, May 29, 1971; March 11, 1972; May 3, 1976; May 2, 1977; August 21, 1989, p. 76; February 7, 1993, pp. 32-34; February 7, 1994, p. 32; March 24, 1997, John Lahr, review of A Question of Mercy, p. 86.

New York Post, March 11, 1972; June 22, 1984.

New York Sunday News, April 1, 1973.

New York Theatre Critics' Reviews, June 25, 1984, p. 235.

New York Times, May 30, 1971; November 3, 1971; November 8, 1971; December 12, 1971; April 19, 1973; April 29, 1973; November 9, 1973; May 8, 1977; May 8, 1982, p. 17; June 22, 1984, p. C3; February 12, 1993, p. C31; January 30, 1994, section 2, p. 5; February 1, 1994, p. C13; April 19, 1995, p. C13; February 26, 1997, Ben Brantley, review of A Question of Mercy.

New York Times Book Review, February 7, 1993, p. 21.

Publishers Weekly, November 16, 1992, p. 46; August 21, 1995, p. 48.

Rapport, 6, 1994, p. 26.

Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO), January 26, 2001, Lisa Bornstein, review of A Question of Mercy, p. D16.

Rolling Stone, September 7, 1989, p. 31.

Sarasota Herald Tribune (Sarasota, FL), March 5, 1999, Amanda Schurr, review of Hurlyburly, p. 20.

Saturday Review, November 27, 1971; April 17, 1976.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 25, 1998, Paula Nechak, review of Hurlyburly, p. 21.

Seattle Times, December 25, 1998, Misha Berson, review of Hurlyburly, p. I6; May 6, 1999, Misha Berson, review of A Question of Mercy, p. G28; May 13, 1999, Michael Upchurch, review of A Question of Mercy, p. C1.

Tampa Tribune (Tampa, FL), March 12, 1999, review of Hurlyburly, p. 5.

Time, May 3, 1975; May 9, 1977; August 21, 1989, p. 54; January 18, 1999, Richard Schickel, review of Hurlyburly, p. 86.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), January 3, 1993, p. 6; February 7, 1993, p. 6.

Variety, March 8, 1972; February 7, 1994, p. 60; March 3, 1997, Robert L. Daniels, review of A Question of Mercy, p. 78; February 21, 2000, Markland Taylor, review of The Dog Problem, p. 49; June 11, 2001, Robert Hofler, review of The Dog Problem, p. 25.

Village Voice, November 15, 1973.

Washington Post, July 9, 1990, p. B2; July 20, 1990, p. WW14.

Washington Times, December 28, 1998, Gary Arnold, review of Hurlyburly, p. 11.

Weekend Australian, March 13, 1999, David Stratton, review of Hurlyburly, p. R20.

Winston-Salem Journal (Winston-Salem, NC), June 25, 1999, Mark Burger, review of Hurlyburly, p.E4.

World Literature Today, spring, 1994, p. 371.*