Theatre critic and reporter Mel Gussow wrote more than 4000 reviews for the New York Times over 35 years. “Gussow was long associated with Off and Off Off Broadway, the traditional home of experimental writers. He was often one of the first to take the city’s young emerging playwrights seriously, as he did with Sam Shepard, David Mamet and John Guare. As a critic, he tended to view his role as advisory rather than adversarial and was an early enthusiast of talents like Robert Wilson, Charles Ludlam and Richard Foreman, and later Julie Taymor. “