[4] Him is stylistically indebted to vaudeville, circus, burlesque, German expressionism, surrealism, cubism, satire, and Dada.
[19] The program for the premier performance at the Provincetown Playhouse lists the title of the play in lower case letters, him.
The main issue in Me and Him's relationship is Me's pregnancy and she is shown with her baby at the climax of the Freak Show in Act 3.
[33] The metatheatre of act two, especially in the form of the dialogues between Me and Him following each scene, forces the audience to reconcile with the nature of theatre, and by extension, art itself.
[30] The play's meta-theatrical middle act and fourth-wall-breaking ending confront the nature of the theatre as both illusory and real.
[39] Richard Kennedy claims that in early drafts of Him, Cummings' was attempting to "present Freudian ideas in symbolic action."
Listen sit knitting in their rocking chairs with their backs facing the audience for most of the play.
[32] All the characters in the play-within-the-play, with the exception of those played by The Doctor and Him, return as spectators at the Freak Show of act 3, scene 6.
Scene 2: Three Middle-Aged Men, Virgo, Porter Scene 3: A Soap Box Orator, Ten people who stop, look, and listen, Nineteen people who go their separate ways Scene 4: Will, Bill, an Intruder Scene 5: Male, Female, Six Coalblack Figures, Nine Players, a Personage, Negress (Frankie) Scene 6: Plainclothesman, Englishman, Cop Scene 7: Two Passengers Scene 8: Ethiopian, Two Centurions, Four Fairies (Claud, Tib, Con, and Gus), Mussolini (whom the other characters refer to as Caesar, though he is dressed as Napoleon), Fascist, Messenger Scene 9: Gentleman, Interlocutor, Shape, Second Shape, Woman, Old Woman, This Shape, Whore, Fourth Shape, Mother with a Child, Voice, Another Voice, Girl's Voice, A Dark Voice, Policeman Characters At Au Père Tranquille (Les Halles) (3.3): Vestaire, Chasseur, Blond Gonzesse, Waiter, Headwaiter, Gentleman (played by The Doctor), Him, Youthful Woman (Alice), Elderly Woman (Lucy), Older Woman (Sally), Fairly Young Woman, Will, Bill, A Whore The Freaks in The Freak Show (3.6): the Nine Foot Giant, the Queen of Serpents, the Human Needle, the Missing Link, the Tattooed Man, the Six Hundred Pounds of Passionate Pulchritude, the King of Borneo, and the Eighteen Inch Lady, Princess Anankay (who is Me holding a newborn baby in her arms)[42] Him is unusual in that it was published in book form before its first performance.
[43] Early critics assumed that the play was a closet drama and, until its first performance in the spring of 1928, thought it would remain as such.
[49] At the suggestion of Henry Alsberg, and the Provincetown Players worked with Cummings and set designer Eugene Fitsch to bring the scale of Him down to something manageable for the small company.
[51] This production was directed by James Light and starred Erin O'Brien-Moore as Me, William S. Johnstone as Him, and Lawrence Bolton as The Doctor.
Circle Repertory Theatre's production was directed by Marshal Oglesby and starred Trish Hawkins, Lanford Wilson, and Neil Flanagan, with costumes by Jennifer von Mayrhauser.
This pamphlet was a collection of critical reactions to the play and contained an introduction by Gilbert Seldes.
[66] Alan Dale of the New York American called Him "piffle" and said that he had "no positive idea of the trend of the precious thing".
[67] Him's early critics claimed the play lacked structure, meaning, sense, and message.
[32][68] John Hyde Preston said of Him that it "is not a play at all, but a mess of formless talk with not a very clear idea behind it".
[69] In his review of the Provincetown production of Him, Edmund Wilson of The New Republic called it "the outpouring of an intelligence, a sensibility, and an imagination of the very first dimension.
"[68] Of the same production, Harold Clurman of Nation wrote, "the play's purest element is contained in duos of love.
We realize that no matter how much 'him' wishes to express his closeness to 'me,' he is frustrated not only by the fullness of his feeling but by his inability to credit his emotion in a world as obscenely chaotic as the one in which he is lost.
"[70] After seeing the 1944 Vassar production of Him, Mr. and Mrs. Ludwig Kahn remarked that Him was "an interesting and stimulating, sometimes irritatingly challenging performance.