["Red Cross"] is a disagreeable, and hateful, play. It is also as mysterious and haunting as [Mr. Shepard's] "Chicago" of a few seasons back. Preceded by earsplitting, abrasive rock music that goes on forever, and then by dead silence, "Red Cross" is about a man who is afflicted with body lice. The setting is a cabin in the woods where everything is dead white…. The lice, needless to say, are invisible and (let us hope) metaphorical, so that the question literally becomes: What is eating this infested fellow in this antiseptic setting—a fellow whom we see, at the end, with blood pouring down his face? Although various snap answers, sociological and political, may come to mind, they are not necessarily Mr. Shepard's. His metaphor is his secret…. [The play] is horrid, it is occasionally (and surprisingly) moving, and it is absolutely unrecommendable.

Edith Oliver, "The Theatre: 'Red...