The Madness of Lady Bright

The Madness of Lady Bright has been cited as the first off-off-Broadway production to receive mainstream critical attention, and earned its original lead actor, Neil Flanagan, an Obie Award.

[2] Critics have noted that the play contains some of Wilson's last uses of experimental devices, such as the presence of "unreal" characters, before he adopted a more realistic style from the mid-1960s onwards.

[5] Responsible for the low-traffic night-time reservations desk, he had ample time to produce his manuscript on the hotel's typewriter, an experience he likened to Tennessee Williams's practice of writing while working selling subway tokens from a booth.

[7] Wilson cited his dislike of Adrienne Kennedy's play Funnyhouse of a Negro as among his influences in writing the work: [S]eeing this silly black girl flip out in her room was the most uninteresting idea.

[9] Journalist Anne Marie Welsh describes The Madness of Lady Bright as the first contemporary play in which "gay characters were portrayed as humans, not as villains, depressives or deviants".

[1] A similar claim has been made for Doric Wilson's Now She Dances!, an interpretation of Oscar Wilde's Salome, produced three years earlier at the Caffe Cino.

[4] Wilson was impressed by the director's interpretation of the text and his suggestion for accompanying the play with the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto Number 23.

"[19] It was produced by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club's repertory troupe, alongside Wilson's Home Free!, on tour in London in 1968.

[24][25] The 2024 revival, presented by Cleveland's minimalist theatre company, Cesear's Forum, reunited another 1960's one-act play by Wilson, the combination entitled Ludlow Fair & The Madness of Lady Bright, at Kennedy's Down Under, Playhouse Square.

Cleveland Scene's, Christine Howey, wrote: "As written by Wilson, Lady Bright does not have a story arc, it has a serrated edge that Wright energetically navigates as his mind slowly slips into madness.