Danny, whose fellow truck drivers call him “the animal,” seems incapable of tender emotion, while Roberta, who is still haunted by the memory of an ugly sexual incident involving her father, is distrustful of men in general.

[2] In 2023 it was announced that the play would be revived again off-Broadway starring Aubrey Plaza and Christopher Abbott at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in a production directed by Jeff Ward[3] and produced by Sam Rockwell.

[4] Mel Gussow of The New York Times declared, "Performed without intermission, it is too long (85 minutes) to be approached as a vignette, and it is too dramatically underdeveloped to be regarded as a full-length double portrait...the play is the equivalent of sitting at ringside watching a prize fight that concludes in a loving embrace".

[5] For the 2004 revival, David Rooney of Variety wrote, "A dark and dirty riposte to meet-cute Hollywood romances about lovable losers finding each other .

the play traces the to-and-fro swing of the pendulum between the characters as hope and the possibility of love materialize before them, first as drunken make-believe and later as something frightening but real.