Sam Shepard, at around thirty, is one of the three or four most gifted playwrights alive. His "The Tooth of Crime" is … strong and vivid and funny…. The play, like Mr. Shepard's wonderful "The Unseen Hand," of several years ago, is a comedy with science-fiction trimmings. It is about an aging and garrulous fellow of the Old West called Hoss, whose control of his territory is threatened by a "new" man, an icy, impersonal, taciturn young fellow called Crow. The play is also about the nature of fantasy (Mr. Shepard may be the first dramatist since [Luigi] Pirandello to bring us news on the subject of illusion and reality) and about power and feeling and the end of romance, and in the Old West Shepard has found the perfect setting for his ideas. "The Tooth of Crime" could be considered an allegory, I suppose, but let's not. It is surely a satire. Most of Act I is taken up with the anticipation of Crow's arrival and with preparations for it; most of Act II is taken up with a fight between him and Hoss, which ends with Hoss's overthrow…. The story is told in small scenes and songs and dances and—as was also true of "The Unseen Hand"—in language as vigorous and humorous and audacious as the imagination behind it. One of the joys is seeing the playwright slip in and out of parody and toss clichés into the air without ever losing his balance. He is indeed an original, but it might be pointed out that the qualities that make him so valuable are the enduring ones—good writing, wit, dramatic invention, and the ability to create characters. (p. 92)
Edith Oliver, "Fractured Tooth," in The New Yorker (© 1973 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.), Vol. XLIX, No. 4, March 17, 1973, pp. 92, 94.
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