Customer Reviews

Elmer Rice: Three Plays: The Adding Machine, Street Scene and Dream Girl

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Elmer Rice's first play was the 1923 production The Adding Machine is an eye opening take on the soul of a man, who for 25 years adds up figures in the sales department, never missed a day of work and gets canned for technology, an adding machine. The play is a satirical take on corporation, the evolution of man as the slave, and the afterlife. Very enjoyable.

Street Scene
No producers wanted to take Rice's Street Scene, produced in 1929, because of the many characters, and many plots. So Rice directed the production of 602 performances. The successful 3-act play consists of 27 main characters, 14 non-essential characters, and several passers-by.

The setting is the exterior "walkup" of a New York ugly brownstone tenement. It's an unusually hot day, and the many neighbors are socializing and gossiping about life, the economy, and each other. Then, a tragedy occurs. This is an engaging entertaining play with excellent dialogue and intriguing immigrant characters.

I will update the review as I come across Dream Girl. ....Rizzo

This is a pretty neat book. It has great 'what you want to know' info about everything cultural, historical, environmental about the camino. I wish it wasn't so bulky - but there's just so much stuff to pack in there! My biggest complaint is that when you are just wading through it's a little hard to weed out what you want to read about from what you don't want to read about. But I guess that's no fault of the authors' since they can't read my mind. :) Great book w/ really cool info. Nice to read before you go - and you wish you could take it w/ you.