“The multi-level structure of the play allows the author to say many things simultaneously to his audience without having to laboriously string them out one after the other; it’s a technique which is designed to produce a snappy, compact, and near-cinematic treatment of what it means to be gay in 1982 after having gone through the changes of the past two decades. Its content is so full of weighty issues for gays that it was delightful to see that its material kept being presented in a light, frolicsome fashion designed to engage the attention of even the least-thinking member of the audience so that he went away with a clearer picture of his situation.   Ego Positioning is clearly designed to appeal to a mass gay audience without sacrificing any of its ideas. It aims at showing gay history, lived history, that is; the history that each of us carries around with him simply from having been born in a particular generation with particular social attitudes to contend with. This kind of gay history belongs to everyone; there are no radicals or conservatives as far as it is concerned, only people living with whatever amount of ‘consciousness’ they happen to posses or acquire for themselves. In putting this kind of personal/social history on stage Barry Lowe has succeeded in turning into art (don’t let that word put you off: it only means turning experience into a permanent and collective memory) something which, because of its fragility and transiency, was in danger of being buried and forgotten.   It’s because Ego Positioning has, consciously or unconsciously, such a weight of serious themes behind it that I’m tempted to leave aside its razzle-dazzle surface. But the songs, choreography, and simulated casual sex in it are exactly the elements which guarantee everyone will enjoy it. (In fact, the simulated sex should be praised from another point of view too, because to show sex on stage is intrinsically liberating, even to a gay audience). -George Daniel, Oxford Weekender News #40, 22 july 1982 The author’s parallel-action play begins and ends in a public toilet. Through all 23 readily-comprehended locale changes and time shifts, the doings in essence remain reassuringly/revoltingly/relentlessly/refreshingly the same (take your pick). Only the details and partners change, as just about every kind of gay sexual activity is simulated or alluded to.  In Ego Positioning [the author] has done something of significance in its own right. His comparison of changing gay life-styles in recent years isolates a common factor. Just as a tomcat sprays all over to mark out his territory, so the tomcatting human male directs his sex drive acquisitively. Each conquest is another place piddled on … the securing, perhaps, of some sort of ego-related lebensraum.   It’s sobering to realise that guys can be acquired as chattels, just as women have been through the ages.   Mr. Lowe is surely right to identify sentiment as the big redeeming thing to help one along. It’s when feeling surfaces in Ego Positioning that the play has some of its best moments. There’s often comedy present as well … a reminder that humor’s another great thing to value.  - Ralph Aldritch, Campaign, August 1982                                           Ego Positioning  is a warm and endearing play, with lots of that special laughter that springs from truthful depiction of humankind. With its insights into, and lack of illusion about, gay relationships, it is a play for the gay community to be especially proud of. I not only recommend, but urge people to see Ego Positioning. It has riches in plenty.  - Ralph Aldritch, Campaign, April 1983 on the revival production.