SOURCE: "Offbeat—But a Beat Too Far," in The New York Times, 15 November 1981, Section D, pp. 3, 31.

Kerr notes that disbelief was his prevailing response to Crimes of the Heart, maintaining that Henley pushes the play's improbabilities into the realm of jokes.

Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart, now at the "Golden after winning virtually every prize going during its run at the Manhattan Theater Club, is loaded and perhaps over-loaded with quirky, casually outrageous, Mississippi-Gothic misbehavior. As I watched the three MaGrath sisters reassemble for the 30th birthday of one and for the impending death of the grandfather who'd long cared for them, I found myself often grinning at what might have been grue-some, sometimes cocking my head sharply to catch a rueful inflection before it turned into a comic one, and always, always admiring the actresses involved. I also found myself, rather too often and in spite...