SOURCE: "All New, All American," in The New Republic, Vol. 181, 7-14 July 1979, pp. 24-5.

In this review, Kauffman dismisses Getting Out as "one more Girls in the Big House story" and characterizes the use of two actresses as Arlie-Arlene as a "stale theatrical device. "

Getting Out by Marsha Norman (Theatre de Lys) … originated at Actors Theater of Louisville, then proceeded via the Phoenix in New York (where I saw it last year) to its present home (where I saw it again). A southern prostitute-drug addict is released from prison and is determined to straighten herself out. It's misleading to say that Joan Crawford, alive and starring today, would want to film it; it's truer to say that this script, with its language scrubbed, could have been done—figuratively was done—in the 1930s.

The lack of anything more than naturalistic varnish on one more Girls in the Big...