[In the following review, originally published in Daily News on February 16, 1990, Watt discusses the experience of watching Bogosian's Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll.]

The scatological vaudeville that Eric Bogosian has created in his riveting new solo show, the 100-minute Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, cuts so close to the bone that the borderline between theater and the world outside seems almost nonexistent at times.

Yet this is entertainment, and the gallery of a dozen or so wildly assorted characters ranging from rich megalomaniacs to street bums that the actor-author impersonates with such fearsome intelligence have us shocked, laughing and—for such is the way with even the most biting theater—leaving Off-Broadway's Orpheum with the enjoyable feeling of having had a good time. Our eyes, ears and minds are thoroughly refreshed after a fine, if slightly overlong, workout.

Our first encounter is with a beggar slyly identifying himself with the rest of us and our last is with a druggie sitting on the forestage while dreamily considering that we dwell in a compartmentalized world possibly ruled entirely by a network of interlocked computers.

Along the way, in both vignettes and sketches, Bogosian, casually dressed in the almost classic anonymity of white shirts, dark pants and sneakers, bores into aspects of our society with the precision of a high-speed drill.

In his lengthiest account, a young lout delightedly recounts, with bursts of raw laughter, the “time of his life” when he and his pals threw a disorderly party with party girls, moved on to offend a Hell's Angel member and beat it in time, and wound up trashing a McDonald's. What huge fun!

The one bit of pure theater, distancing but hilarious, finds our hip Everyman on a TV talk show portraying a rock star on the comeback trail after a prolonged bout with drugs.

Smoking a cigarette as if it were a joint, he discusses his reform, how “good” it felt being “bad,” and, with off-hand sanctimoniousness, his current efforts on behalf of a charity.

Bogosian is never still except in the blackouts or dimouts as he walks away from us, and his remarkable act has been staged to perfection by Jo Bonney.