Ronald Ribman
The setting is the rooftop terrace of a cancer hospital in 1976, where two men converse their way from pedantic banter to verbal jousting to painful soul baring over the course of the play.
Three stories about the Jewish elderly in Florida: in "Yiddish," a man and a woman, both married to others, form a bond through their native language; in "The Detective," a married couple who have grown apart come together again as they pursue a thief in the neighborhood; and in "The Home," a woman struggles against her grown children, who want to place her in a nursing facility.
Tommy Wilhelm (Robin Williams) is a salesman. An honest, hard-working guy who has lost his job, his girlfriend, and left part of his sanity behind as he heads to New York to pick up the pieces of his life. He's always been able to sell, but caught in a downward spiral, he must, in addition, face the father who never really understood him, while trying to balance his newly precarious existence.
Morris Mishkin is a elderly religious Jew in New York. His wife Fanny is very ill. He's a tailor, but he can't work because his back has given out. He doesn't even have enough money for Fanny's medicine. Finally, a black fellow appears from nowhere in the Mishkin kitchen. He says he's an angel from God, sent to help Mishkin. The black angel is even Jewish, named Alex Levine? But will Morris believe in the angel? And can the angel perform the miracle that he promises? Written by Martin Lewison
