SOURCE: A review of Swimming to Cambodia, in Art-forum, Vol. XXIII, No. 7, March, 1985, p. 99.

In the following evaluation of the Performing Garage production of Swimming to Cambodia, Howell admires Gray's "deceptively simple storytelling."

For nearly ten years Spalding Gray has been performing autobiographical monologues as an adjunct to his activity with the Wooster Group, the seminal experimental theater troupe. Unlike the work of that ensemble, which is multilayered, emotionally distanced, and relentlessly deconstructive, these solos are informal, vernacular, and, in form, an admiring direct quote of a basic storytelling mode. Wearing L.L. Bean-ish street clothes Gray appears as "Spalding Gray," seats himself at a nondescript table, and reels off a picaresque monologue which has been rehearsed into a script. Within this stripped-down format he weaves tales with considerable skill, combining raconteurial expertise, comic shticking, and elements of cosmic teaching, autotherapy, and the confession.

Over time the monologues...