In the last years of his life, Cullen wrote mostly for the theatre. He worked with Arna Bontemps to adapt Bontemps's 1931 novel "God Sends Sunday" as the musical "St. Louis Woman" (1946, published 1971). for Its score was composed by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, both white. The Broadway musical, set in a poor black neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri, was criticized by black intellectuals for creating a negative image of black Americans. In another stretch, Cullen translated the Greek tragedy "Medea" by Euripides, which was published in 1935 as "The Medea and Some Poems", with a collection of sonnets and short lyrics.