Alternating between fantasy and reality, this acerbic black comedy offers a comic, but stinging, assessment of middle-class Jewish life in America. The setting is a new 'luxury' high rise apartment in Coney Island, the home of the Loman family, struggling to put up a good front even though continually short of cash. The father, Herbie, is chronically overworked and underpaid; his wife, Doris, tells herself that she loves her life - even though, as the play begins, she is shredding her wedding dress to make a Halloween costume; their older son. Stewie, eagerly awaits his bar mitzvah and the potential loot to be gained in gifts; and the youngest son Mitchell, is absorbed in writing a musical version of DEATH OF A SALESMAN. While they all strive to present an appearance of contentment and closeness, the family is beset by underlying tensions which burst forth when Herbie seizes his son's bar mitzvah money and, after an unseemly confrontation with everyone, storms out of the apartment Mitchell's pain prompts him to show us a good portion of his new musical about the picnic the Loman family should have When - and if - Herbie returns home is dealt with ironically by the interpretation of four possible endings, played one after the other, and culminating in the most comically depressing of all - the actual outcome, in which Herbie and Doris sit in their usual oppressive silence. NOTE: The use of the original music composed by David Shire is required for performance.

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