SOURCE: Leiter, Robert. “Theater Chronicle.” Hudson Review 38, no. 2 (summer 1985): 297–99.

In the following, Leiter reviews Mike Nichols's production of Hurlyburly.

Hyperbole as a staple of drama criticism is nothing new, and the nearly unanimous praise that has greeted David Rabe's Hurlyburly is a prime example of the phenomenon. The play is by no means “a powerful permanent contribution to American drama”; rather, it is overly long, unconvincing, muddled in thought and filled with bombastic language masquerading as the height of realistic speech. Yet what is most frustrating about the work is that lurking beneath the tiresome rhetoric is a fine idea for a play that Rabe (and, by extension, his director Mike Nichols) refuses to face.

The scene is a house in the Hollywood Hills shared by two casting agents, Eddie and Mickey, both of whom are divorced. Eddie is a long-winded fellow, given to philosophical pronouncements, who “does...