Skipper Next to God (play)

Skipper Next to God is a 1940s play written by Dutch author Jan de Hartog. It is a melodrama with three acts, a single setting, and fifteen characters. The action of the play spans two months time during 1938. The story concerns the captain of a Dutch merchant ship who has taken on 146 Jewish refugee passengers from Hamburg, and struggles to find a port in the New World that will accept them.

The play was first performed for underground audiences during the German occupation of the Netherlands. Its first public and English-language performance was at Windsor, England during July 1945. It was revived in London by Anthony Hawtrey during November 1945, and had its Australian premiere in Melbourne during April 1947.

Cheryl Crawford then sponsored the play in Manhattan in early January 1948 as a non-commercial production for The Experimental Theatre. The play was staged by Lee Strasberg with the single setting by Boris Aronson. The star was John Garfield, who took on the role for the same pay as the other actors. Originally meant for a one-week engagement, Skipper Next to God proved so popular with audiences that it was extended three weeks then converted to a commercial Broadway production, where it ran until the end of March 1948. Critical reception was mostly positive, with the New York Daily News including Skipper Next to God among the ten best plays of the 1947-1948 season.