Further Reading
- Betsko, Kathleen and Koenig, Rachel, "Beth Henley," in Interviews with Contemporary Women Playwrights, pp. 211-22. New York: Beech Tree Books, 1987. (Conversation in which Henley discusses the creative process, winning the Pulitzer Prize, politics, and feminist issues.)
- Brustein, Robert, "Good and Plenty," The New Republic 187, No. 3541 (29 November 1982): 24-6. (Finds the "caprices" of The Wake of Jamey Foster "obvious and ersatz.")
- Brustein, Robert, Review of Abundance, The New Republic 203, No. 25 (17 December 1990): 28-9. (Maintains that Abundance "makes no sense at all.")
- Gagen, Jean, "'Most Resembling Unlikeness, and Most Unlike Resemblance': Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart and Chekhov's Three Sisters," Studies in American Drama* 4 (1989): 119-28. (Examines some parallels and differences between Henley's and Chekhov's plays, including structure, theme, and vision in the two works.)
- Getz, Ricki R., Review of Crimes of the Heart, Kliatt 17, No. 3 (Spring 1983): 20. (Positive assessment of Crimes of the Heart.)
- Gill, Brendan, Review of Crimes of the Heart, The New Yorker LVII, No. 39 (16 November 1981): 182-83. (Praises Crimes of the Heart for its "daffy complexity of plot" and its "pace that keeps us from ever questioning the degree of clever manipulation that we are being made subject to.")
- Guerra, Jonnie, "Beth Henley: Female Quest and the Family-Play Tradition," in Making a Spectacle: Feminist Essays on Contemporary Women's Theatre, edited by Lynda Hart, pp. 118-30. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989. (Examines the female characters' journeys to autonomy in Henley's plays.)
- Hargrove, Nancy D., "The Tragicomic Vision of Beth Henley's Drama," The Southern Quarterly XXII, No. 4 (Summer 1984): 54-70. (Takes aim at the overemphasis on the comic elements of Henley's plays and their neglect of serious concerns.)
- Kauffmann, Stanley, "Two Cheers for Two Plays," Saturday Review 9, No. 1 (January 1982): 54-5. (Mixed assessment of Crimes that hold that Henley "has struck a rich, if not inexhaustible, dramatic lode: the tension between the fierce lurking lunacy underlying the small-town life she knows so well and the sunny surface that tries to accommodate it.")
- Kramer, Mimi, "Picturing Abundance!" The New Yorker LXVI, No. 39 (12 November 1990): 105-06. (Judges Abundance an absorbing drama about "women's relationships to each other and to their fate.")
- McDonnell, Lisa J., "Diverse Similitude: Beth Henley and Marsha Norman," The Southern Quarterly XXV, No. 3 (Spring 1987): 95-104. (Focuses on "the distinguishing characteristics" of the two playwrights and "emphasizes their striking originality as they work within common literary and dramatic traditions.")
- Nightingale, Benedict, "A Landscape that Is Unmistakably by Henley," The New York Times (3 June 1984): H 3, H 7. (Admires The Miss Firecracker Contest as a "thoroughly beguiling addition to the Henley archives" but finds the production too frenetic in tone and mood.)
- Oliver, Edith, Review of The Miss Firecracker Contest, The New Yorker LX, No. 17 (11 June 1984): 112-13. (Favorable evaluation of Miss Firecracker that asserts that "where it shines is in the imagination of the playwright, in the characters she has created, in the strangeness and depth and validity of their emotions, in the lines she has written for them to speak, and in her own astonishing, humorous vision.")
- Paulk, J. Sara, Review of The Debutante Ball, Library Journal 116, No. 17 (15 October 1991): 80. (Recommends the book version of Henley's play.)
- Review of Abundance, Variety 341, No. 4 (5 November 1990): 84. (Mixed review of the play, contending that “the lack of overall pizzazz and a satisfactory dramatic resolution makes it unlikely the play would make the grade with a larger Broadway audience.”)
- Rich, Frank, Review of Crimes of the Heart, The New York Times (5 November 1981): C 21. (Argues that in Crimes Henley "builds from a foundation of wacky but consistent logic until she's constructed a funhouse of perfect-pitch language and ever-accelerating misfortune.")
- Rich, Frank, Review of Crimes of the Heart, The New York Times (22 December 1980): C 16. (Admiring review that observes: "Miss Henley is a beguiling writer. She meets her characters on their own terms and then embraces them; in her compassionate view, every conceivable crime of the heart is pardonable.")
- Rich, Frank, Review of The Miss Firecracker Contest, The New York Times (28 May 1984): 11. (Highly favorable notice that asserts: "For all the play's hyperbolic comic shenanigans, Miss Henley never loses sight of the sad, real people within.")
- Shepard, Alan Clarke, "Aborted Rage in Beth Henley's Women," Modern Drama XXXVI, No. 1 (March 1993): 97-108. (Analyzes the "murderous and suicidal fantasies" of Henley's female characters.)
- Simon, John, "All's Well that Ends 'Good'," New York Magazine 15, No. 42 (25 October 1982): 77-9. (Expresses disappointment with The Wake of Jamey Foster, stating it "looks like recycled Crimes.")
- Simon, John, "Repeaters," New York Magazine 17, No. 23 (4 June 1984): 79-80. (Negative review of The Miss Firecracker Contest that contends that "much of the writing and all the characters as well as most of the plot twists smack of assiduously cultivated strangeness, of weirdness hauled in by the gross.")
- Simon, John, "Yo, Kay!" New York Magazine 23, No. 44 (12 November 1990): 92-3. (Harshly negative evaluation that calls Abundance a "malfeasance of the mind" and censures its "overheated feyness.")
- Tischler, N., Review of The Debutante Ball, Choice 29, No. 8 (April 1992): 1225. (Mixed assessment of The Debutante Ball.)
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