Kroetz is part of a generation of playwrights who modified the critical folk-piece, emphasizing in his works of the early 1970s the underside of West Germany's affluence through realistic portrayals of the lives of the poor.
Simon Stephens argued in 2016, "Kroetz was identifying how poverty can give rise to brutality, to cynicism, despair and fear.
[6] Michael Toteborg wrote in 1978 that the best-known of the early plays are Wildwechsel (Game Crossing or Jailbait, 1968), Mannersache (Men's Business, 1970), and Farmyard.
After the early plays, he tried writing works for television because he wanted to reach a wider audience, and his move to TV had this effect, with Maria Magdalena viewed by five to 15 million.
The contemporary television fare cautioned through comedy against activism by workers, and Kroetz wished to refunction televisual Volkstheater for progressive aims.
Mel Gussow describes Kroetz as reliant on words rather than images, and quotes the playwright as having been disturbed by the "garrulity" of most theater of the same time.
"[14] The extreme naturalism of Request Concert has led to retrospective comparisons of it with Chantal Akerman's film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975),[16] and also with Marsha Norman's 'night, Mother (1983).
[17] Gautam Dasgupta has compared him to David Storey and Rainer W. Fassbinder, and also stated that his plays are "structured around cliches in the manner of Ionesco".
[8] Susan L. Cocalis writes that early on Kroetz does not give readers a way to "locate the events on stage in a hypothetical framework and thus gain some distance to the action.
[5] These plays have been described as impacting audiences primarily through compassion, and after 1972 he moved to a more analytical form of political drama about broader economic issues.
[5] According to Craig Decker, Kroetz in his television works dramatizes how TV can constrain viewer consciousness; the playwright hopes to create people who break away from commercial culture and act as citizens rather than consumers.
He praised Farmyard as capable of stirring audiences to social involvement, but criticized Men's Business for its ending and Munich Child for its "demagogy".
[22] Frank Rich wrote in a review of Michi's Blood that it is not one of Kroetz's best work, and said the playwright engages in "uncharacteristic point-making, by force-feeding his heroine [...] Beckett-isms".
[23] The Washington Post's David Richards argued, "Unpleasant as it may be, 'Michi's Blood' is on to something about people deprived of language, purpose and the awareness of their own feelings.
Works like Lienz – Gateway to the Dolomites (1972), Maria Magdalena (1972), Sterntaler (1974), Heimat (1975), and Agnes Bernauer (1976) were neither critically nor commercially successful.
In Maria Magdalena Kroetz in her view struggles with his own formal idiom, and the Brechtian elements of Sterntaler and Heimat make them less powerful than previous works, akin to melodrama or soap opera.
[5] The Guardian's Susannah Clapp expressed a lukewarm view of The Nest, describing some scenes as moving but arguing, "There is uplift at the end but the unremitting intensity takes its toll on the pace.
He said that even certain impediments of the production he had attended (like Downey's English translation being relocated in Queens) did not "mute the jarring strains of [Kroetz's] genuinely disturbing theatrical voice.
"[30] In 2003, The Guardian's Michael Billington gave a Southwark Playhouse performance four out of five stars and wrote, "What makes Kroetz an exceptional dramatist is that he links behaviour to economics."
"[31] Gardner called it "a gripping but gruelling dissection of a relationship that flounders on mismatched desire, conditioned responses and the utter failure of language [...] one of his best plays".
[33] Gardner gave a positive review to a 2007 performance, arguing that Kroetz is able to make mundane events "hypnotic"; she claimed that the majority of the play is "like watching an unstable building sway and fall in agonising slow motion.
"[4] In 1998, Angelica Fenner noted that the negative characterizations of female protagonists who choose abortion had garnered him some praise from conservative factions.