[Comparing "Gemini" with opera] has a certain validity. The emotions, even occasionally the voice, are huge. At one point, a character expresses her distaste for opera: "All that screaming. It's not like real life." Actually it is like life in "Gemini." Mr. Innaurato has a tendency toward overstatement, but to reprimand him for that is almost like scolding Kafka for writing about cockroaches. It comes with the territory….

[The] play is a spiraling comedy—a cascade of human frailties, fealties and pretenses. There are mock fainting spells and threatened suicides—the many things that people do to gain attention—and there is uproarious laughter.

Mr. Innaurato … is already a master at surprising us with jarring juxtapositions and seeming contradictions (a violent argument interrupted by the sudden singing of "Happy Birthday") and at staging comic tableaux….

"Gemini" is filled with … infectious moments. It springs with humor—and in the strangest places. Mr. Innaurato is a natural writer, who has a feeling for the precise word that makes a line both spontaneous and genuinely amusing. For example, an absurdly fat boy pleads, "If I promised to lose weight and get less weird, can't we be friends?" Scanning that sentence, we realize that the word "less" is what makes it so funny….

"Gemini" is not as powerful as Mr. Innaurato's "The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie."… "Benno Blimpie" is a haunting nightmare. "Gemini" is lighter and more expansive.

The two plays share a sensibility, subject matter and theme. In each we see obsessive characters formed and entrapped by family, background and environment. The plays, opening within days of each other, are conclusive evidence that Mr. Innaurato is a playwright with his own extraordinary voice and the imaginative talent of a conjurer.