When McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion! opened Off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1994, it was greeted warmly by its reviewers, who predicted it would quickly transfer to Broadway and be the splash of the following season. It did, and it was, earning McNally the Tony Award for Best Play in 1995 (one of four Tony Awards he netted between 1990 and 1997). Those who praised the play applauded its profound, evocative themes, its masterful dialogue, and its depiction of gay characters as ordinary people facing both ordinary and extraordinary problems.

In the Nation, David Kaufman observed:

What’s difficult to convey in any discussion of Love! Valour! Compassion! is the grace with which the characters become real people as their stories unfold. It’s not only that they’re vividly rendered, but that they’re revealed gradually, in a layered and richly textured fashion.

In Backstage, reviewer David Sheward noted that through the characters’ struggles in the play ‘‘we see the adverse and the everyday.’’ But, he added, ‘‘McNally’s deep characterizations, sharp eye for details, and terribly funny and terribly natural dialogue are anything but everyday.’’ In Time magazine, Richard Corliss urged his readers, ‘‘In concert with director Joe Mantello and a faultless ensemble, McNally has created a celebration—of manhood, friendship, making do, soldiering on. If you’re looking to celebrate the vibrant life of off- Broadway, start right here.’’

Still, some critics, even those who otherwise praised the play, felt compelled to warn their audiences about its liberal use of male full-frontal nudity, something Broadway has seen its share of in productions like Hair and Oh, Calcutta! but has not yet come to accept as ordinary and tasteful. ‘‘One caveat about this theatrical masterwork,’’ cautioned Sheward, ‘‘it has more nudity than anything since Oh, Calcutta! So if you plan to audition for the replacement company, head for the gym.’’ Reviewing the 1997 film version for Variety, Emanuel Levy commented, ‘‘This screen version contains some improvements over the play. There is less emphasis on frontal nudity, which was excessive onstage.’’

For all its awards and general popular acclaim, however, there were those reviewers who disliked the play. Robert Brustein’s review of the Broadway production in the New Republic took McNally to task for being overly predictable, formulaic, and, above all, non-theatrical. ‘‘Love! Valour! Compassion! is simply another example of . . . Yuppie Realism,’’ Brustein complained, ‘‘a genre that focuses on upwardly mobile middle-class professionals, usually on vacation, in the act of exchanging witticisms while examining faulty relationships and compromised principles.’’ Furthermore, the critic fumed, it is ‘‘less a play than a treatment for a T.V. series . . . the play has no real subject other than sexual relationships—who is sleeping with whom, and how the who and the whom can be rearranged.’’

Although he found some positive qualities in the play, Stefan Kanfer, writing for the New Leader, ultimately expressed some of the same concerns as Brustein. ‘‘Even at his infrequent best,’’ Kanfer suggested, ‘‘McNally shows little originality or audacity. For all its psychological candor and physical nudity, Love! Valour! Compassion! is actually nothing more than The Big Chill seen from the other side of the bed, complete with nostalgic angst and b——y asides.’’