Like many of Gurney's plays, The Cocktail Hour is a comedy exploring the world of upper-class families in the Northeastern United States.
A review in The New York Times described it as "an examination of an overprivileged family that fights domestic battles while downing drinks.
The discussion of John's play, which is also called The Cocktail Hour, gives Gurney a lot of opportunity to lampoon the theatre scene.
He also revealed that he promised his parents it would not be produced in Buffalo, New York, his hometown where they still resided, during their lifetimes[4] because "the details are so close to home."
Nevertheless, "Mr. Gurney still has new and witty observations to make about a nearly extinct patrician class that regards psychiatry as an affront to good manners, underpaid hired help as a birthright and the selling of blue-chip stocks as a first step toward Marxism.