'Lynn Nottage has packed so much life, love and history into her panoramic memory play... No matter how pain-filled and obstacle-ridden this tale of the coming-of-age of an adolescent African-American girl in 1950s Brooklyn might be, what drives this play is the pervasive sense of life as a great and exhilarating feast - a cornucopia of passion, imagination, knowledge, experience and yes, confusion, too' Chicago Sun-Times

The Crump family is adrift and in trouble. Recently widowed Godfrey is under the spell of Sweet Father Divine, while his teenage daughters, Ernestine and Ermina, immerse themselves in the illusions of Hollywood to escape racial prejudice. But things change quickly when free-spirited Aunt Lily shows up...

Crumbs from the Table of Joy , an arresting, thought-provoking play about racial and social issues of the late 1950s, was first performed Off-Broadway in 1995, and has since been revived numerous times.