The Sydney Morning Herald criticised the "excessive detail" and called it "dour, plodding, earnest" but said it "explored its chosen situation thoroughly enough to illuminate not so much a social problem as the complex interdependence of ordinary family life."[2]
The Bulletin said "this banal story, of an insufferable do-gooder and his equally insufferable family of long-suffering stereotypes faced with practising what they preach in the adoption of a refugee boy, rubbed its second-hand humanity in the audience's face with all the subtlety of Sonny Liston wielding a nine-pound hammer. Only Janice Dinnen’s remarkably mature performance as the eldest daughter and Ethel Gabriel’s complaining grandmother achieved any semblance of sympathy or credibility."[3]
