In “The Last Night of Ballyhoo,” playwright Alfred Uhry deftly explores the lives of assimilated upper-class German Jews living in Atlanta in the late  1930’s.  His examination of Jewish assimilation and intra-ethnic prejudice was awarded the 1997 Tony Award for best play.

It is December 1939 , Hitler has recently conquered Poland, “Gone with the Wind “ is about to premiere, and the Freitag/Levy families are looking forward to Ballyhoo, a cotillion open to German Jews and closed to Atlanta’s  Eastern European Jews.

Uhry,  born in 1930’s Atlanta, and knowing the milieu first hand,  created an insightful look into the period before knowledge of the Holocaust decreased divisiveness among German and Eastern European Jews. Uhry has interspersed his serious message of assimilation and intra-ethnic divisiveness with sparkling dialogue,  many humorous moments  and amusing  and somewhat eccentric characters.