Parodic language is Coover's meat and potatoes. Words are where the action is and what the action is, so much so that the pieces [in A Theological Position] seem better adapted for radio than for stage. Coover's problem as a potential playwright is how to translate his large talent for sound effects into equally potent gesture and visible action. He solves the problem of a main action by exploiting in each piece a burlesque re-enactment of some form of ritual sacrifice, moving from the myth of Movie Western in The Kid to Christian myth in the title play. In A Theological Position, a sort of Chaucerian fabliau, the main comedy depends upon the radical incongruity between what the Priest is doing (screwing the wife) and what he is saying (persuading the husband by Thomistic argument that the Immaculate Conception is impossible)…. But the play's—and the Priest's—climax depends upon the precise location of an answering voice—Her CUNT speaks. After which, so does the Man's—and the Priest's—Prick, in a travesty of the miraculous tongues of the Holy Ghost. What is so concrete for the aural and visual imagination, however, is more problematic for the literal concreteness of the stage. (p. 756)
B. H. Fussell, "On the Trail of the Lonesome Dramaturge," in The Hudson Review, Vol. XXVI, No. 4, Winter, 1973–74, pp. 753-62.∗
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