Coming immediately after The Hot L Baltimore, which won the 1973 Drama Critics Circle 'best play' award, Lanford Wilson's The Mound Builders was … a disappointment, not to mention a considerable bore.

Seemingly, [the play's plot] would contain ample opportunities to explore each character's nature and attitudes, their approaches to life and their ideas concerning Man's destiny. Seemingly, it would also offer the occasion for major conflicts and confrontations among this diverse group of people. Sadly, it does not, for they are not people but insufficiently explored, inadequately motivated puppets in the playwright's hands. Only the sister, and, fleetingly, the young man intent on turning the property, his property, into a lucrative site for highways, dams and motels, thus obliterating forever the lost civilisation, come alive. Only at the end does the conflict between two approaches to civilisation—and life—come into focus. Before that, there is endless rumination, endless...