Customer Reviews

Toys in the Attic

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The story of the Berniers family was Lillia Hellman's final full-length play for the stage (well, there was am insipid adaptation called "My Mother, My Father, and Me") and it was her best. The play has great parts, including a dissolute, nearly middle-aged leading man, Julian, back from hell raising to reunite with his sisters, who are both drawn to him (and his new wife) and repelled by them and the lifestyle they represent.

The local color (New Orleans) is beautifully done and the music, written to Hellman's lyrics by the great Marc Blitzstein, is awesome, should be revived often. OR, you could use the AEROSMITH album as your mental soundtrack as you read along in this play. There's a film of this, too, with Dean Martin, that (surprise!) isn't half bad either.

If you like sagas of family life, this might be the very play for you. Be warned, unless carefully cast, you might produce this play with actors whom your audience will not believe are siblings. This has sunk some amateur productions of "Toys in the Attic."

They were poor, clean and orderly family who didn't like where they lived. This sounds too familiar for everyone but why feature black Simpson character when they can talk about, for argument sake, a Korean neighbor? Why the big to do for the brother's getting beaten up after a heist. What's wrong with his constitution? Haven't we heard "Thou shalt not..." and there are ten (10) of them according to Moses. But I agree with Lillian Hellman that money is like a lady; she leaves when the guy misbehaves, she's fickle and she changes her mind for no reason all of which point that it is not a very dependable indicator to earn respect and stand erect in the neighborhood.