Synopsis
Beast With Two Backs
$10.99 Published by Samuel French Inc
3 Male 2 Female
In Greenwich Village in the late 1920s Al, an artist, moves into a rooming house on Macdougal Street and finds himself being pulled deeper and deeper into the lives of its inhabitants
Above him live Mary Margaret, a lost actress from Ohio, and her philandering poet boyfriend, Jem. Al meets Mary Margaret when she comes home drunk one night and blunders into his bed
He falls in love with her - but the landlord, McLish, keeps bursting into Al's room to help him with his romance
McLish, a failed writer, has his own troubles: a beautiful but compulsively disloyal wife
And somebody keeps playing "The Saint James Infirmary Blues"
Al's attempt to rescue Mary Margaret is the core of this richly atmospheric love story which vividly recreates the world of artists and writers in this era