THE STORY: Against a brilliant setting, we are introduced to the street urchins, who only too readily turn to the devious methods of their elders in making their hard way in life; against a background of tenements and a magnificent East River apartment, standing side by side, we see unfold before us a story of gangsters and police, simple pleasures and vice, and of wealth flaunted in the face of poverty. A stirring story of young love is skillfully combined with the last efforts of a gangster to see his mother, and the young man’s ultimate capture.
Revived to great success in 1997 by the Williamstown Theatre Festival, this play was an enormous success on Broadway and elsewhere, and marked the beginning of the Dead End Kids or Bowery Boys.
“An enormously stirring drama.” —The New York Times.