When Mountain Language opened at the National Theatre in London on October 20, 1988, it earned mixed reviews. Some commentators praised the play's compelling subject and themes, while others found the play to be too political. In an overview of Pinter and his work in Contemporary Dramatists, Lois Gordon applauds the play's "frightening images" of totalitarianism. Douglas Kennedy, in his review of the play in New Statesman & Society writes that Mountain Language is "a highly condensed guided tour through state tyranny" presented through "a series of stark, rather atypical images of political repression." While he commends its "tight" construction, he considers it to be "uncomfortably hollow," arguing that it is "terribly predictable in its vision of state terror." Kennedy claims that the play "could be ultimately seen as more of a pronouncement of Pinter's new-found political activism than as a polemical statement about the brutal grammar of totalitarianism...