This feature film tells the true story of Charles S. Gilpin; the first black star on Broadway and his leading role in Eugene O'Neill's controversial play, The Emperor Jones.

The play Romeo and Juliet has been translated around the world. Now Eve Annenberg’s gritty, funny feature film sets William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in contemporary New York City with Brooklyn-inflected English and Yiddish spoken by a talented cast.

When yuppie Korean-American lawyer Peter brings beauteous bride Sookhy home to suburban New Jersey, she seems withdrawn, English-challenged and easily bullied by her mother-in-law. But fate abruptly takes Peter out of the picture, leaving a curiously unperturbed Sookhy (who's descended from a line of female shamans) free to force her company on the glamorous Caucasian couple next door.

Four twenty-something women, crammed into a small Manhattan apartment, have dead end jobs (or no job) and overdue rent. They discover cash and self esteem when they set up an illegal bookie joint in their kitchen. Suddenly they can pay their bills; they imagine joining the middle class; they even make corporate donations to charity. The film also explores their relationships with men, most of whom are unfit for anything lasting, and with their mothers, who appear in surreal, imagined conversations with their daughters.

Life hasn't been much of a cabaret lately for poor Clem, a not-so-young-anymore, chronically unemployed dreamer. Just ask Ippolita, her disgruntled girlfriend. Then she meets Jo, in whom she discovers a kindred spirit.

A penniless barber schemes to marry his wealthy landlady for her money, but friends, foes-and the Gods-intervene.