In the following review-essay, Trousdale provides an overview of the initial productions of The Great White Hope, examining the play's "profound histrionic sensibility."

The theatre's name like its shape is as self-defining and as functional as the new apartment buildings surrounding it in Washington's Southwest are meant to be. It calls itself Arena Stage, and it is octagonal without as within to provide seats for the spectators who, arena-fashion, both enclose and participate as audience in the performance that takes place below. It was here in winter 1967 under the direction of Edwin Sherin that Howard Sackler's The Great White Hope was first staged. The play later opened in New York, under the same director and with almost the same cast, where its success story by now is well-known. In their reviews of October, 1968, Life magazine and the New Yorker agreed that the play is spectacular and a...