[What] emerges from [I Never Sang for My Father] is a gentle reminder of how well-to-do American families unintentionally pollute the lives of their members.

But what also emerges is a kind of dull disappointment in the ordinariness and familiarity of it all. The play begins rather promisingly as the son, Gene, steps forward to share his intelligence with us. His philosophical statement, "Death ends a life but not a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind towards a resolution it may never find," is spoken in a special density of light that suggests the mysterious area of the subconscious. Then by a subtle brightening of the lights we bob up to the surface of the play's actuality, to meet the son's aged parents returning from a Florida vacation.

There is some amusement in the rambunctious rudeness of the father…. And there is also fun in the...