SOURCE: "The Joy of the Unexpected," in The New York Times, 10 April 1983, pp. H5, 19.

In the following review, Kerr faults 'night, Mother for lacking passion. The play, he states, "is controlled, precise, believable. It is also utterly clinical. "

It is entirely possible that Marsh Norman's 'Night, Mother, at the Golden is a more perfect piece of writing, more perfectly executed [than Patrick Meyers' K2]. No word rings false. As an overweight young woman with a sallow skin and eyes that have retreated into private thought interrupts her mother's run-on chatter to say that she is going to kill herself, tonight, a very brief silence fills the new and newish but utterly standardized house the two have been sharing. The setting—elongated, as in the Cinemas-cope ratio, to show us living room and kitchen together—is surrounded by a black border, like the edging that was once customary on...