Paradise Lost (play)
Paradise Lost is a drama by Clifford Odets that takes place in 1932, during the Depression. The play was originally produced on Broadway by the Group Theatre in 1935. It was also filmed for television broadcast in 1971.
Paradise Lost
December 9, 1935
English
The Gordon home in an American city
Plot summary[edit]
The play takes place in an unnamed American city during the Depression, in 1932. The head of the family, Leo, and his wife Clara are middle-class and prosperous. However, over the course of the play Leo and his partner Sam lose their handbag business and the family must come to terms with this. The other characters in the play include a friend, Gus, and his daughter, Libby, a frivolous and self-centered young woman who is newly married to Leo's son Ben; a boarder, and an assortment of other characters.
Odets said of Paradise Lost that he'd hoped that after people see it, "they're going to be glad they're alive".[1]
Paradise Lost
United States
English
February 25 –
March 4, 1971
Glenn Jordan directed a television revival production of Paradise Lost that was first broadcast on American Public Television in two parts, on February 25 and March 4, 1971. The editor was Frank Herold and the play was recorded at Teletape Studios, NYC. Herold received a 1972 Emmy Award nomination for video editing.[2]
Paradise Lost was released on DVD in April 2002 by Kultur's DVD Broadway Theater Archive.[3] According to Luther Adler in the presentation's intro, Paradise Lost was Clifford Odets' favorite and Harold Clurman considered it one of the six or seven really important contemporary American plays.