Shtick Book

Lynn Nottage, one of America's foremost playwrights, has created a nostalgic look at a slice of The Great Migration with Crumbs From the Table of Joy. Centered on the Crump family who have moved from Florida to New York City in the 1950's, eldest daughter, Ernestine, is our protagonist. Her father, Godfrey, now a widower, has relocated the family following his wife, Sandra's, death in hopes that Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement will help supply answers to his many questions about life that burden him in the wake of her passing. Godfrey's sister-in-law, Lily, already transplanted to New York, reacquaints herself with her sister's family in a semi-permanent manner. Lily opens Ernestine's and her younger sister, Ermina's, eyes to the ways of less subordinate women - a trait more agreeable to Ermina than to Ernestine. Lily also stirs up unforgotten passions in Godfrey from when they had mutual interest in each other, but their own deep seated problems interfere with any hope for reconnecting. In his quandary over Lily and Sandra, Godfrey meets and marries Gerte, a recently immigrated German woman who is white. All the intersecting complications of their disparate lives in Brooklyn culminate in the midst of Ernestine's high school graduation.
The play bears a weighty and wistful melancholy that is very effective in telling a story that is so ethno- and gender centric. The blending of post-war African-American and European Jewish perspectives makes for an intriguing dynamic. Nottage's hand at melding humor and lament into her writing is exceedingly well developed.