The story of mankind living out its destiny under the benevolent eye of God. There were giants on the earth in those days of the Deluge. In spirit Noah was the greatest. It is Mr. Odets' mood not to put him on a pedestal but to characterize him as the worried head of a family of ordinary individuals. A peevish though loving hero who feels himself close to God...the story of how Noah persuades his skeptical family that God has given all of them a mission, how they bicker, yet do the job obediently, how God helps them solve the most prodigious problems, how they scamper into the ark when the rains fall. All this, told with sympathetic humor in the form of a folk fable, ought to be enough to delight and move any theatre-goer. In the second act the voyager concludes triumphantly with the grounding of the ark, the flowering of the peach, and the departure of the family in their several ways to replenish and fructify the earth. It is a triumphant conclusion, but after a long series of quarrels and sorrows.

In this play Odets doesn't change the language to make it Biblical ... he still writes like Odets. It's a comedy. Suddenly, you get Noah and his wife bantering with each other like two old members of the Yiddish theatre, you get the classic Odets dialogue, crackling off the page.