Critical Comments

In THE TIME TRIAL, Jack Gilhooley, another exceptional talent, presented us with a cultural experience quite different from that of the average civilized theatregoer. Yet the predicament of a gang of smalltown, Southern outcasts struck me as profoundly human. Speaking in a language as brutal and quick‑witted as any New York street per­son's, they spend the day drinking and watching cars circle a race track. In many ways the play became a powerful account of lives going in circles; of drugs, sex, and "speech" going nowhere. For these people, small‑town America has become a raw, bloody place with no way of fitting in or getting out; a kind of destructive maze containing nothing of lasting value. It's a mordant and unsparing work written without apology and, in an odd way, aimed directly at us.

—Joseph Papp, Plays from the New York Shakespeare Festival

 

RED BESSIE . . . is clear-headed and humane, not unaware of the hurt that political idealism can cause, and more fun than might be expected of such a high-minded project.

—Keith Miller, London Times

 

THE BRIXTON RECOVERY . . . is a wistful romance with a steeliness beneath the surface . . . has a precise sense of character, atmosphere and imagery . . . echoes with the sound of the Brixton streets, of the punch‑drunk battler on the international circuit and the restless nomads who move between countries searching for new lives.

—Mel Gussow, New York Times

 

Alongside Shaw, Coward, Moliere, Chekov and Ibsen, and inter-mingled with Williams, Miller, Pinter, Albee, Hellman and O'Neill are Athol Fugard, Ed Bullins, Tom Stoppard, Sam Shepard, Jack Gilhooley, Lanford Wilson, David Mamet and David Rabe, as some of the most frequently produced writers in the American theatre today.

—Theatre Profiles/3, Theatre Communications Group

 

Gilhooley has an infallible ear for real‑life human speech — and a remarkable skill for getting it onto the stage. He is equally adept at capturing the surface idiosyncrasies that turn faces in the crowd into human charac­ters. If the playwright were a camera, certain primitive tribes would surely ban him, for fear he would capture their souls.”

      —Marilyn Stasio, New York Post

 

The writers I respect tell us a completely different and absorbing tale every time. Jack Gilhooley is one of those playwrights.

—Christopher Gould, Publisher, Broadway Play Publishing, Inc.       

 

I love this man’s writing.

—Ed Asner, Actor

           

I know Jack as one of the most inventive playwrights of his generation.                           

—Lee A. Jacobus, Editor

The Bedford Introduction to Drama