SOURCE: Spencer, Charles. “Compelling Drama Let Down by a Lamentably Soft Centre.” The Daily Telegraph (26 June 1998): 25.

In the following negative review, Spencer derides How I Learned to Drive for its soft-centeredness and lack of courage.

[How I Learned to Drive] is a deeply creepy play. It has already been a big success in New York, and the dramatist Paula Vogel has won a Pulitzer Prize for it. Yet it left me feeling uncomfortable when I caught it off-Broadway and it remains just as disconcerting the second time around. A large part of this is deliberate. It is a drama about a paedophile and his relations with his young niece, much of the action taking place during driving lessons in suburban Maryland. It is also a memory play, with his victim looking back on her experiences, which began at the age of 11, from the perspective of middle-age. Strong dramatic...