The House on Tomorrow Street

Ida Picker's play "The House on Tomorrow Street" is a delicate slice of crummy modern life. Miss Picker is really talented: she succeeds in capturing a lower class tawdriness without making it either tragic or sentimental.

At the heart of the matter is "the kitchen," a shabby restaurant run by three somewhat pathetic, somewhat noble women. Just as the audience begins to understand their funny view of the world, their hopeless ineptitude, and their dreams of beauty and happiness, a new element enters the story. Although not exactly a personification of evil, Mr. Perkins is the symbol of business, advertising, wealth and anal compulsiveness; through his intervention the restaurant stages a glowing comeback and the women's dreams are quite thoroughly extinguished.

This theme doesn't always work. Sometimes the Kafkaesque abstraction rings a bit false; sometimes the dreams ring a little corny, like the repeated line about "a house on a hill."

But more often Miss Picker's details gently evoke of a certain shabby idealism: the women speak reverently of vitamins, reminisce about a sister's wedding, discuss soap opera without being able to remember the endings. That the pretty waitress should look back at being a drum majorette as the highlight of her life is a perfect touch.