On The Bum, Or, The Next Train Through
by Neal Bell

"Set in 1938, during the last stages of the Depression, the play is the story of an New York out-of-work actress, who, through the WPA, gets an acting job and is sent to a town called Bumfork, somewhere in the Midwest, and far too close to the home she thought she had escaped years earlier. ”…beneath its raucous humor, ON THE BUM reaches for deeper connections between the depressed cultural climate of 1938 and present day America, and especially the wary relationship between the Federal government and the theater…What the play shows in abundance…is the playwright's ear for the poetry of idiomatic American speech.“ —The New York Times. ”…ON THE BUM is a wonderfully theatrical evening.“ —New York Daily News. ”Beneath what appears a naturalistic surface there's sinew and agility, playfulness and danger, provocative political drive…ON THE BUM is a screwball comedy with dangerously high stakes."

— Village Voice