[George Tabori] sets The Cannibals in Auschwitz concentration camp and relates it to the New York of the 'sixties by the device of survivors. The play is a deliberate attempt to shock us into a realization of what we as human beings are capable of. First staged off Broadway in 1967, it uses the ritual, symbolism and obscenity which were then the new vogue of the American fringe, literally to ram home the author's angst, with some sideswipes at the modern American way of life. Tabori is involved intellectually and emotionally in his theme…. One feels one ought to be engaged as much as he with the horror and the filth, but, not having had his experiences, we have to rely on the play. And this, powerful though it is, does not quite join us with him. Maybe we have less need of this particular catharsis; certainly there is no escaping it here.
John Coleby, "Plays in Print: 'The Cannibals'," in Drama (reprinted by permission of the British Theatre Association), No. 114, Autumn, 1974, p. 84.
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