John Van Druten's tender, episodic drama, based on Kathryn Forbes's memoir "Mama's Bank Account," follows the Hansons, a Norwegian immigrant family making their way in early-1900s San Francisco, as seen through the eyes of daughter Katrin, who grows up to become a writer chronicling her family's life. At the household's center is Mama, a woman of quiet wisdom and boundless resourcefulness who stretches the family's modest income, real and sometimes fictional, to hold her children together through illness, romance, and the small triumphs and heartbreaks of immigrant life, all while maintaining the comforting fiction of a secret bank account that gives the family a sense of security. Colorful relatives orbit the household, including Mama's blustering, seemingly heartless Uncle Chris, whose gruff exterior conceals real tenderness, and various aunts whose personalities add warmth and comic texture to the family's daily struggles. Episodic in structure, the play moves through a series of loosely connected incidents rather than a single driving plot, building instead a rich, affectionate portrait of a loving family sustained by Mama's steady, self-effacing strength. Its warmth and nostalgic Americana made it enormously popular in its day, later inspiring both a film and television adaptations.

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