A multi-award winning poignant drama, playwright Gary Morgenstein’s “A Tomato Can’t Grow Can’t Grow in the Bronx” is set in a working-class neighborhood of the Bronx during the racial and political unrest of the 1960s. The multi-generational play portrays the dysfunctional family dynamics between a married couple and the wife’s overbearing parents who live in the apartment next door. When the couple’s rebellious teenage son gets mugged, it triggers his father’s desire to move to Long Island and claim his share of the American Dream. However his powerful father-in-law has other ideas. Featured in the cast are Jackie Kusher*, Andrea Bell Wolff* (2022 Perry Award Winner, Best Actress), Mike Roche*, Holly O’Brien*, Marina Rebecca Chan and Spencer Neumann. Director Bernice Garfield-Szita says: “Although the play’s world takes place during 1968, a particularly tumultuous year, these richly identifiable and flawed characters confront many of the same social issues that we face today, struggling to communicate, connect and love each other. Their hopes and fears and dreams belong to any age, and to any family.”

“A Tomato Can’t Grow Can’t Grow in the Bronx” was performed to sold out houses in April at the Center Playhouse in Freehold, winning three 2022 Perry Awards from the New Jersey Association of Community Theaters (NJACT) including Best Original Play and Best Actress.
*( Indicates member of Actors Equity).