SOURCE: "A Pinch of Variety Never Hurts," in The New York Times, 3 June 1979, pp. D5, 24.

In the following, Kerr offers a negative appraisal of Getting Out, arguing that the "barrage of ills that assails the curiously passive Arlene is so unremitting … that we come to see some of them as gratuitous, some of them as repetitive. "

When I first saw Marsha Norman's technically accomplished and vigorously acted Getting Out in a Phoenix Theater workshop production last fall, I left the theater irritated with myself for having, in the end, become irritated by the play. Surely my discontent was unreasonable in the face of all that was admirable here. The author had elected to show us two facets of a girl's personality—played by two actresses of markedly different ages and temperments—by letting them share the same stage space, with their paths crossing often enough, and intimately enough...