Emily Mann on Talley’s Folly

Dear Patrons,

Today, you have the good fortune of seeing one of the great theater teams of the second half of the last century—Marshall W. Mason and Lanford Wilson—come back together to reinvestigate one of their triumphant successes, Talley’s Folly.  I am delighted to share this modern classic with you and your families, and thrilled to host a great American playwright and the premier interpreter of his works at McCarter Theatre.

McCarter audiences haven’t heard playwright Lanford Wilson’s words on our stage since his wonderful adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters  in 1992.  Since then, he has continued to write beautiful, poetic, and quintessentially American plays that have delighted audiences across the country.  Talley’s Folly is a play that I have always loved and that has long lingered in my memory.  Like Tennessee Williams, Lanford has an extraordinary ability to capture a romantic story with exquisite beauty, devoid of sentimentality.  The lovers of the play, Sally Talley and Matt Friedman, discover the humor, awkwardness, and vulnerability of true intimacy.  At the same time, the play marvelously intertwines two inherently American stories: Matt’s immigrant experience and Sally’s political awakening in the American heartland.  Set in 1944, the play asks us to examine what it is to be on the homefront of a nation at war.  In the midst of this election season, I can’t think of a more pertinent question.

The production you are seeing today is the first major revival of Talley’s Folly in thirty years.  Six-time Obie Award winner and five-time Tony Award nominee Marshall Mason is at the helm, joined by the incomparable design team of John Lee Beatty (set), Jennifer Von Mayrhauser (for her twentieth McCarter costume design!), Phil Monat (lighting) and Chuck London (sound).  We are blessed with two exquisite actors—the delightful Margot White (of Broadway’s The Farnsworth Invention) and the superb Richard Schiff (Emmy Award-winner for The West Wing).  I’m exceedingly proud that at McCarter, we are able to bring the nation’s top theater-makers to our stages to challenge themselves and to do their best work.  I hope you will enjoy their exploration of this beautiful play as much as I!

Yours,