Robert Brustein, writing in The New Republic, called Children of a Lesser God a "supreme example of a new Broadway genre—the Disability Play," in which, regardless of our defects, the audience learns that we all share a common humanity. He further noted that speech in this drama "operates not to inform and reveal but rather to manipulate emotions and reinforce conventional wisdom." Paul Sagona declared in Dictionary of Literary Biography that Medoff "exploits a stark, absolute communication problem," but does so "without the threat of physical violence" or guns. Sagona identified Medoff s plays, especially Children of a Lesser God, as addressing the problem of "self-isolated personalities making themselves felt without disintegrating."

Other critical commentary centers on how the characters' inability to communicate with one another works as an effective means of illustrating the both the problems caused by prejudice and those caused by...