[In the following review, originally published in Daily News on February 9, 1990, Kissel complains, “Ultimately much of the satire [in Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll] seems on a facile level, and a lot of the characters are not really explored in depth.”]

Eric Bogosian is a monologist for the wired generation.

Whether he's playing a subway panhandler, a man who is paranoid about the environment, a participant in a wild bachelor party, a rock star trying to be convincingly anti-drug, a rapper or a man getting high on pot, philosophizing about the state of the world, Bogosian has a gift for finding comedy and pathos in the unhinged.

Many of his characters [in Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll] have a strong streak of braggadocio in them, like a crude businessman （“No monkfish, no arugala, no Perrier. I need food!”） and a young man obsessed with his sexual endowment. Even these Bogosian manages to make somehow pathetic rather than merely repellent.

All of Bogosian's characters seem to have been strained to the limit. Some of them have reached this stage pharmaceutically. Others, frighteningly enough, seem to have achieved it entirely on their own.

To present an hour and a half of such characters, going from one to another with only the simplest changes of costume, requires a ferocious energy, which Bogosian has.

On the other hand, there is a kind of sameness to Bogosian's people. Only a few really stand out. He leads with his two sharpest portraits, the strung-out subway beggar （“My medication costs ＄2,000 a week, of which Medicaid only pays a third”） and the rock star on a talk show trying to warn young viewers against drugs （“The thing about drugs is you're having such a good time you don't realize what a bad time you're having.”）.

His gruff businessman forcing an associate to fire a long-term employee seems a fairly obvious satire of a contemporary Babbitt; when he urges a young friend, who makes ＄21,000 a year, to start thinking in terms of buying a BMW, though, it seems forced.

Ultimately much of the satire seems on a facile level, and a lot of the characters are not really explored in depth. What holds your attention is the intensity of his performance style. He lunges into each of his characters with a kind of savage force. Sometimes the ferocity seems a compensation for the lack of substance.

The entire show is set on an almost bare stage with striking lighting by Jan Kroeze.

Afterward we walked along St. Mark's Place, which, late on a Wednesday evening, seemed populated entirely by Bogosian's people—scruffy, aggressive, desperate.

Even their insistent, raspy voices remind you of Bogosian's, and you wonder if he spends hours studying them or if he runs a training school for street hustlers and crazies. If he's holding a mirror up to nature, it's a very small part of nature and a mirror designed for a funhouse. You want to see Bogosian, whose talent is formidable, expand his horizons.