When Side Man first opened in 1998, it received glowing reviews. Isherwood calls this "comic and melancholy memory play . . . an affecting, vividly drawn picture of the domestic tragedies that were the ripple effects of a dying business that also happened to be an art form." Likewise, in her review of the play for Down Beat, Yvonne C. Ervin calls the play "a heartbreaking, yet funny, semi-autobiographical Broadway play." Critics particularly liked the play's realistic rendering of the unique aspects of the jazz world in its heyday. As Isherwood notes, "Leight's play gives us funny and piquant snapshots of the jazz milieu, a world whose denizens lived proudly outside the bounds of 9-to-5 respectability." Likewise, Ervin says that the play "transcribes the jazz parlance with poignant accuracy." In addition to the semi-autobiographical connection to Leight, whose father was a side man, critics also cite the connection to Clifford...