“Michael McClure’s The Beard is a mysterious piece of work, for while its surface seems simple, repetitive and obscene, there is an action working which is dramatic and comic at once, and the play emits an odd but intense field of attention…” —Norman Mailer, (from his Introduction)
“The Beard is a milestone in the history of heterosexual art.” —Kenneth Tynan
“…juicy & exuberant…” —Allen Ginsberg
“The dialogue throughout makes ‘Virginia Woolf’ almost a Sunday school recitation by comparison. But the words…effectively project… a reduction of all male-female spats, courtships, fetishes, etc., to simple animal circling, snarling, sniffing, teasing…” —Rick Setlove, Variety