According to his own later account, Oboler came to feel during the play's Washington run that the production was doomed due to its overly realistic presentation, which conflicted with the poetic tone of the dialogue.Night of the Auk, pp. 13–14. However, scholar Charles A. Carpenter would later write that the play's "failure as a theatrical as well as literary work... might more accurately be traced to its conflicting modes of parable and melodrama, the first compatible with Oboler's nonrealistic treatment, the second not."Dramatists and the Bomb (Carpenter), p. 79. In his memoir, Christopher Plummer lamented Oboler's decision to write the play in blank verse, stating that Bloomgarden made suggestions for making the text less pretentious which Oboler ignored. Claude Rains regarded Night of the Auk as "a damned good play".
