A review of this play appeared in the New York Times on November 3, 1987:

Stage: 'Riverside Drive,' in Yiddish and English
by Richard F. Shepard

The setting is fifty years ago, and the question at hand deals with assimilation, with conflict between old-country Orthodox Jews and their Americanized, less rigid compatriots. The show, in Yiddish with lots of English necessarily involved, is Leon Kobrin's "Riverside Drive," and it is, despite the weighty issues it tackles, done with charm and humor as this season's production by the Folksbiene theater.

The play, which opened Sunday, has been adapted by Miriam Kressyn from what one suspects may have been a more sober-sided work by Kobrin, who was one of the prolific Yiddish writers on the American scene until his death in 1948. Miss Kressyn has done an excellent overhaul, keeping the main threads but putting them into a focus that makes for entertaining theater, complete with several interludes of song thrown in. Roger Sullivan, the Folksbiene director for several seasons now, has deployed his bilingual cast in a way that is not only amusing but also, at moments, touching.

It is a three-generation story. Herman (I.W. Firestone), who hails from Eastern Yiddish-speaking Europe, has succeeded in New York, and, from the Jewish slums of the Lower East Side, now lives plushly on Riverside Drive with his wife, Gertrude (Diane Cypkin), who is the daughter of a hatless Reform, German-born rabbi. They have an eighteen-year-old daughter and a thirteen-year old son, both of them ignorant of Yiddish and Judaism. Into this Yankeefied prosperity, complete with Irish maid, come Herman's aged parents, fresh off the boat, green as new pickles and Orthodox to the core of their being.

As played by those spirited veterans of Yiddish stage, Leon Liebgold and Zypora Spaisman, the old parents emerge as the stars of the play, what with their wonderment and disillusionment at their new home in a strange world. There is nothing déjà vu for a shtetl Jewish grandma when she finds her son lives in a building where "a general with epaulets" has nothing else to do but open the door for the residents.

For the first time, the Folksbiene, taking cognizance of the non-Yiddish speaker, is making simultaneous-translation radio headphones available, at a price. On one hand, some adjustment is needed because actors with strong Yiddish projections can blot out headphone English with a mere whisper. On the other hand, "Riverside Drive" has ample English, along with program notes, so you might not need the device for this play.

The Folksbiene has one gain fanned the flickering flame of Yiddish theater and brought us warmth. You want a final irony? The theater in which "Riverside Drive," with its tale of irreconcilable cultural differences, performs is in the premises of the venerable and respected and quite assimilated Reform congregation of Central Synagogue. That's irony, but everyone does seem to be happy with it.