Reviewing "The Moon in the Yellow River" in "The New York Times", Brooks Atkinson wrote "Mr Johnston does not explain; he irradiates." Set in 1927 during an attempt by the IRA to destroy an Irish Free State government power plant, a later "New York Times" review of the play's 1961 revival noted an "exhilaratingly mad, comic strain.". But acclaim was not universal. Irish writer and broadcaster (and later member of the Irish Senate) Denis Ireland remarked that the play's success in London was "natural enough" for "it fulfils the first law of Anglo-Irish literature: it makes the native Irish appear a race of congenital idiots."