The Theater: Ferrying on the Styx

COLD STORAGE by RONALD RIBMAN

One third of any given Ronald Ribman play seems to have been typed on a missing ribbon. It makes him a tantalizing dramatist whose characters are like stripteasers of the mind; they fling off humor, eloquence and poetry but cannot openly discard some essential inner aspect of their being.

There may be a mystical streak in this young playwright, but the stage is mighty barren soil for mysticism. He is certainly haunted by the long scorching annals of the Jewish experience, to which Ribman ascribes survival with suffering...