Street Scene

by Elmer Rice

Drama. Elmer Rice. 16 m., 11 f. Ext. An outstanding Broadway success and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, this is a panorama of the comedy and tragedy of daily life played to the accompaniment of rumbling elevated trains and the tooting of whistles. Though this remarkable play is primarily a slice of life in a poor neighborhood, it is held together by a strikingly dramatic plot which has to do with a theatrical scene-shifter whose wife has been having a sordid affair with the milkman. The husband returns unexpectedly and kills them both. The incident serves chiefly to crystalize the viewpoint and very human reactions of the entire neighborhood. This modern classic that catches the varying moods of daily life as it is lived by millions in a large metropolis. $6.25 list price. (Royalty, $50-$35, Sam French)

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Classics, Fiction

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

Expressionist plays of noted American playwright Elmer Leopold Rice include The Adding Machine (1923) and Street Scene (1929).

He authored novels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Rice

Reviews

[Natasha Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Elmer Rice wrote a play set in 1929 and it stayed there. Let's be honest, Rice is kind of obsessive about ensuring every tiny detail of his work is played exactly how he imagined it when he wrote it. While Rice's enormously precise stage directions are not inherently a problem, they do not hold up well against time. The relative irrelevance of temporal plays after a couple of decades IS inherently a problem with extreme Realism, the mode in which this play was written. While this play was incredibly popular once it was adapted into an proto-Broadway-style musical/opera, Rice's original just doesn't hold up. The characters, some of which are satirically over-dramatic stereotypes and some of which are seemingly complex and believable humans, are a confusing mess of farce and philosophy. Although Rice was attempting to point out then-relevant prejudices and hypocrisies of the lower middle class, what resulted is a disorienting barrage of gestures to ideologic puzzles. My biggest problem with this play is simply that you cannot read or watch it once and absorb all that Rice was trying to say. Sometimes a second encounter is not in the cards for some readers or viewers. While I'm not advocating that all plays should be immediately and entirely decipherable from the first encounter, I believe that an effective work of political art is at least clear about its endeavours. Of course, all this being said, Rice does have a knack for writing both types of characters: flat/farcical, and round/thoughtful. It is because of how expertly he writes both types that their mingling becomes confusing as you cannot tell them immediately apart. Rice has much to say about the economic structure in the USA, as well as about the relationships between gender and societal expectations. Rice gives both the lower class and women a voice in this play, as well as a representative from several minority groups in NYC in the early twentieth century. What is unfortunately problematic about this is that each group is given only one voice to speak for the whole, thus ascribing an entire culture's opinions to those of just one character.
This play is incredibly complex and bears a repeat encounter if it bears an encounter at all.

[Alexandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you thought reading plays was bad, reading musicals is so much worse

[Brittany Weinstock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as I am preparing to cover Anna Maurrant in the operatic version of Street Scene by Kurt Weill. All in all, a very insightful yet dramatic look at life in a poor New York neighborhood in the 1920s. The characters are well fleshed out (Sam is my personal favorite) and the gritty reality of everyday life is displayed well. Taking off a star for the barrage of anti-Semitic language, I know it’s representative of the times but it was almost a little too heavy-handed. A solid, classic play that gave my character more layers and depth.

[Susan Molloy · Rating 5 out of 5]

✒️ Just one scene in front of an apartment house can be packed with many interrelated stories, and this is just what “Street Scene.” I enjoyed this immensely.

📕Published — 1929. In the public domain.
🎥 1931 movie version with Sylvia Sidney, William Collier, Jr, Beulah Bondi, Estelle Taylor, et al.
༺༻🌹 ༺༻🌹 ༺༻🌹 ༺༻

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

read for playwriting class

[Brian McCann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great slice of life. Glad I finally read it. Took me all week, however: it was not a quick read.

[Anna Muthalaly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finally, a decent 1920’s play not written by O’Neill. Appreciate a genuinely competent realist play. Set design is fabulous. Some excellent Chicago notes throughout — America really was gossip sick at the time.

This was the 13th play I read in my attempt to read everything awarded the Pulitzer Prize in drama.

[Radwa]

Street Scene (1931)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022436/...

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This play takes place in front of a brownstone in New York City, presumably in the twenties. The play attempts to portray the complexities, biases, and despair experienced by everyday people. Anna deals with infidelity, Rose struggles with her boss and desires her Jewish neighbor, Frank is abusive, etc. The people in the play are very unlikable, but it is very realistic. A great example is the language and naïvety in Kaplan’s communist leanings:
KAPLAN. No laws! We got already too many laws. Ve must have ection, not laws. De verking-klesses must t’row off de yoke of kepitalism, and ebolish wage-slavery.
ROSE. But wouldn’t people still be unkind to each other and fight and quarrel among themselves?
KAPLAN. My dear young leddy, so long as ve keep men in slevery, dey vill behave like sleves. But wance ve establish a verld based upon ‘uman needs and not upon ‘uman greed—
ROSE. You mean people will begin being nice to each other and making allowances and all?
KAPLAN. All dees vill come. Wot ve hev now is a wicious soicle. On de one hend, ve hev a rotten economic system---

Ultimately, this is a period piece. It describes a place and a time with brutal honesty.

[Alina · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me up till the end of the first act to really get into the story but after that it was definitely an entertaining read. I would love to see this on stage, as there are alot of characters it was hard at time to keep track of who was who and what characters were where. Also it was a bit difficult to read the dialogue of some of the characters who had accents because it is written as if they were speaking in an accent and I feel it would be better understood heard than read. Overall, very entertaining!

[Bobby Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nan's lines are hysterical, in particular.

[Skyler Drier · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kind of a dumb book.