SOURCE: "Aspects of Love and Compassion," in The New Republic, Vol. 212, No. 14, April 3, 1995, pp. 30-2.

[Brustein is an actor, director, theater critic, and author of several books about acting and the social responsibilities of the theater. In the following excerpt, he reviews Love! Valour! Compassion!, faulting its plot, characterizations, and themes as examples of "Yuppie Realism."]

I'm still disappointed in the direction of McNally's career…. Love! Valour! Compassion! is simply another example of what, in reviewing his Lips Together, Teeth Apart, I called Yuppie Realism, a genre that focuses "on upwardly mobile middle-class professionals, usually on vacation, in the act of exchanging witticisms while examining faulty relationships and compromised principles." Instead of being an advance in gay playwrighting, Love! Valour! Compassion! looks more like a regression to Boys in the Band. McNally is now stroking the gay audience in much the same way that Neil Simon used to...