SOURCE: Kelly, Kevin. “ART's Startling, Scorching ‘Hot’.” The Boston Globe (19 April 1994): 23.

In the following review, Kelly discusses the controversial nature of Hot’n’ Throbbing.

Hot’n’ Throbbing, in ART's New Stages series, is likely to be the most controversial play of the year, the Oleanna of 1994. Whatever your response, you stumble out of the Hasty Pudding as battered as the woman trapped in its center, awed by the play's focus on sexual violence and its shadows of terrible farce. “God damn Oprah Winfrey,” the woman's abusive husband says, striking the horror of what playwright Paula Vogel is forcing us to watch. The participle is correct. Vogel—and director Anne Bogart—forces an intensity that convinces you what has been dramatized is not only necessary but inevitable. Trash-topic television has made it to the theater, but with far more serious purpose.

Using a currently overheated domestic issue, the dysfunctional...