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HUMAN DUST1,
by Ossip Dymov
(Yiddish: Menshn shtoyb)
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Introductory note: "The present play
is an attempt to reproduce the body
and pressure of our age, with its
breathless tempo and eternal noise,
the ugliness and brutality, its
mechanical pleasures and joyless
gayety."
"Human
Dust" is a comedy in three acts and
eleven scenes. Scenes by Ossip Dymow.
Directed by Maurice Schwartz.
Settings designed by Boruch Aronson.
The scenery for the play painted by
Alexander Chertoff. Music by
Vladimir Heifitz.
The
play was first performed by the
Yiddish Art Theatre on 25 March
1927. The play itself takes place in
New York, at "the present time".
Here is the cast
list from the 1927 production of "Human Dust" (in
alphabetical order):
Bina Abramowitz,
Celia Adler, Anna Appel, Ben Zvi Baratoff,
Joseph Buloff, Izidore Casher, Lazar Freed,
Berta Gerstin, Wolf Goldfaden, Luba Kadison,
Abrham Kubansky, Esther Lateiner, Boruch Lumet,
Sonia Radina, Isaac Rothblum, Simeon Ruskin,
Maurice Schwartz, Pincus (Philip) Sherman,
Morris Silberkasten and Jeanete Zemell.
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photo: Playwright Osip Dymov. From
the "Lexicon of the Yiddish
Theatre", Vol. 1, New York, 1931. |
The following is the
synopsis of Dymov's "Human Dust". The
name of the actor or actress who portrayed a particular
role is indicated in parentheses:
SYNOPSIS
ACT ONE
Betty (Celia
Adler), a young and
pretty working girl, is the daughter of the
consumptive janitor (Lazar Freed) of one of Manhattan's
skyscraper apartment houses. One of the tenants
of the house is a young bond sharp and merry
blade named Teddy Washburn (Morris Silberkasten), who has a way with
women, and whose shady business and riotous
parties have attracted the attention of the
police. He has little difficulty in luring Betty
to his bachelor apartment, where he seduces her,
as he previously seduced her friend Lizzie
(Berta Gerstin), at
the very moment her consumptive father drops
dead beside the furnace in the basement below.
Having had his way with Betty, Teddy abandons
her, though not without providing her with some
money for a criminal operation.
ACT TWO
At Lizzie's advice
Betty goes to a certain abortionist, who pockets
her money, performs the operation, and throws
her out of his office. Unable to walk she sinks
to the pavement, where she is presently found by
Joe (Maurice Schwartz), a mooncalf conductor on the "L," who has
often had her for a passenger and fallen in love
with her, and for whose sake he frequently
delayed the train at a certain station in the
hope that she might board it. She tells him that
she was knocked down by an automobile. Joe hails
a taxi and takes her to the home of the
eccentric old aunt (Bina Abramowitz), whose life is devoted to her
numerous feline pets. The old woman, who soon
surmises the real nature of Betty's illness,
does not take kindly to her. However, the same
evening she dies from heart seizure, and the
bed-ridden girl passes a night of horror to the
accompaniment of weird caterwaulings.
ACT THREE
The five thousand
dollars which Joe inherits from his aunt enables
him to go into business and to marry Betty.
Follow three months of prosaic bliss, then Teddy
reappears on the scene. Having heard of Joe's
good fortune, Teddy tries to sell him some fake
bonds, but an anonymous letter warns Joe not to
buy any. Being desperately in need of money so
he can leave town and thus evade the police who
are hot on his trail, Teddy visits Betty during
Joe's absence and insists that she either give
him money or else make her husband buy bonds
from him, otherwise he will expose her to the
latter. As she cannot satisfy his demand, Teddy
writes a letter to Joe wherein he tells him of
his former relations with Betty. The infuriated
husband, after learning from obliging gossips
that Teddy has been in the habit of visiting
Betty while he was away, drives her out of the
house, though she is in a family way. In her
plight, Betty appeals for aid to her blind
brother Edward (Wolf Goldfaden), a veteran who lost his eyesight
in the World War. The latter insinuates himself
into the confidence of Teddy and his pal Oliver
(Joseph Buloff),
at the same time tipping off the police of the
gang's plans and movements. One day Edward and
Joe enter Teddy's apartment and hide in the
inner room. Presently Teddy arrives, followed by
Betty. She implores him to tell Joe the truth,
so that her husband might know she was not
guilty of misconduct after her marriage. Teddy
reuses to do so, and in a fit of passion tries
to attack her, whereupon she shoots and kills
him. Joe and Edward rush in from the other room,
and presently the police arrive. The latter
pretend to be satisfied when Edward informs that
it was he who shot Teddy in order to save his
sister's honor. Soon photographers and reporters
flock into the room, and Betty is started on the
road to Tabloid fame.
1 -- From the play program of "Human
Dust",
Yiddish Art Theatre, 1927. Courtesy of YIVO.
2 --
Synopsis prepared by Jacob Cooper. |
