[What] emerges from [I Never Sang for My Father] is a gentle reminder of how well-to-do American families unintentionally pollute the lives of their members.

But what also emerges is a kind of dull disappointment in the ordinariness and familiarity of it all. The play begins rather promisingly as the son, Gene, steps forward to share his intelligence with us. His philosophical statement, "Death ends a life but not a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor's mind towards a resolution it may never find," is spoken in a special density of light that suggests the mysterious area of the subconscious. Then by a subtle brightening of the lights we bob up to the surface of the play's actuality, to meet the son's aged parents returning from a Florida vacation.

There is some amusement in the rambunctious rudeness of the father…. And there is also fun in the mother—about whose health the father pretends to be concerned…. But from this point on it is all only a sporadically engaging demonstration of the falseness of the family's interrelationships. Theoretically, this demonstration is leading Gene to an understanding of the truth about himself and his father, but, as the playwright has warned us, resolution is not to be expected in his play any more than it is in life….

[There] is insufficient time for a really convincing Freudian explanation to be expounded. Not that there isn't something very profound in a self-centered father who regards his son as a dividend, and who exploits him by manipulating his guilt, but the playwright doesn't stay underwater long enough….

One suspects that the whole play would have benefited had it stayed more consistently within the mysterious world of memory as did The Glass Menagerie. For the best parts of I Never Sang for My Father are those that treat its important and unusual subject least literally and least logically. Unfortunately, they are outnumbered by the drearier ones in which the playwright's sense of fair play and verisimilitude prevail.