While these critics and Foote's Pulitzer Prize for the work attest to the merits of this play, other critics have been perplexed by the praise. In a scathing review of the 1995 production, John Simon wrote in the New York Magazine, "How many times can he, as prolific as Miss Oates and nearly 80, keep writing the same sentimental, pathetic, old-fashioned, terminally boring play?" More sedately, Michael Feingold noted that same year in the The Village Voice that The Young Man from Atlanta is "a very sparse return for the ticket price, yet Foote's plays keep getting produced, applauded, praised." Critic John Lahr would concur. Writing for the New Yorker about the 1997 production, he notes that The Young Man from Atlanta "opened to high—and somewhat bewildering—praise. The drama is a house of cards propped up on the foundation of powerful performances by Rip Torn and Shirley...