The 1968 opening of Indians in London was greeted with a mixture of puzzlement and guarded praise. People wondered why a show that was so thoroughly American would first be staged in Britain. Irving Wardle, reviewing for the London Times proclaims: “the play is one of the few necessary works to have appeared from the America of the sixties. Whatever holes you care to pick, it is a work of high ambition.” Stateside, drama critic Clive Barnes, also reviewing the London production, writes that Kopit's play is “only partially successful” and that “the play is at its best at its most serious, when it is making substantial and documented charges against the Government.” British critic Martin Esslin, writing for the New York Times, considers Indians to be both “moving” and “amusing.”

When Indians was restaged in Washington, D.C., a year later, Julius Novick found it to...