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Abundance
Abundance
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Author: Beth Henley Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Format: Softcover # of Pages: 68 Pub. Date: 1991 ISBN-10: 0822200058 ISBN-13: 9780822200055 Cast Size: 2 female, 3 male
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About
the Play:
Abundance is a full-length drama by Pulitzer Prize-winning
author Beth Henley. Wickedly funny and deeply touching,
Abundance follows the adventures of two mail-order
brides, on their twenty-five year journey across the American
frontier and revels in their lifelong friendship – a bond strong
enough to withstand a kidnapping, outrageous catastrophes – and
even husbands.
Abundance is a hard-hitting story of two women, each a
pioneer in her own way. Bess Johnson and Macon Hill are mail-order
brides who meet while waiting for their husbands to pick them up to
start life in a small town on the High Plains of Wyoming Territory in
the 1860s. Bess is a romantic while Macon Hill is exuberant and
determined about getting on with a life in the West, one that
promises to be full of possibility. The husbands arrive. Bess,
expecting Mike Flynn, gets his brother, Jack. Macon's husband is
William Curtis, a widower with one eye and a scarred face. Life
becomes very difficult for Bess and Jack, and Bess is constantly
abused and totally unappreciated. They struggle – and fail – to
make ends meet. On the other hand, Macon is hardly tolerant of
William, although the couple is affluent. One Christmas Eve, in a
rage, Jack burns down the cabin. Macon and William take the couple in
and start living together for a longer time than expected. Bess and
Macon, having forged a strong bond, decide that some day they will
strike out on their own, though Macon is reluctant to actually do so.
Some time later, while celebrating their mutual wedding
anniversaries, Jack and Macon become lovers at the same time Bess is
abducted by Indians! Macon, Jack and Will continue to live together
over the years, believing that Bess has been killed. However, Bess
returns, having escaped death by becoming assimilated into Indian
life, and now seems incapable of resuming a normal life. During her
absence, the fortunes of Macon and Will have greatly diminished. Bess
agrees to tell the story of her abduction and escape for publication
and the lecture circuit. With the help of a professor, she becomes
the country's hottest sensation with this dramatic – and
embellished – tale. Jack develops a new love for her, while Macon
and Will separate and fail miserably at their new business pursuits.
Many years later as Bess is getting ready to retire and Macon is
ready to die, the women reconcile as they muse over how they have and
have not "savored the boundlessness of it all."
Abundance premiered in 1989 at South Coast Repertory in
Costa Mesa, California.
Cast: 2 female, 3 male
What people say:
"Abundance
percolates with dark laughter … this is its author's most
provocative play in years … Given Ms. Henley's ability to spin the
tallest of tales, Abundance sometimes has the
tone of a rambunctious tongue-in-cheek Twain story, with echoes of
Thomas Berger's Little Big Man." — New York Times
"a real treat…." —
The New Yorker
"Part of the pleasure of the
play is seeing the women's differing destinies spelled out deftly,
often comically. Henley's gift for the telling image and the absurd
situation comes into play regularly." — Variety
"Henley has an unmistakable
talent for making human desperation seem funny, complex and
unpredictable." — Village Voice
About the Playwright:
Beth
Henley is an award-winning American playwright, screenwriter, and
professor best known for her play Crimes of the Heart
(Pulitzer Prize in Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award
for Best American Play). Her plays have been produced on Broadway and
continue to be well-received and widely popular, both in professional
and regional theatres throughout the United States as well as
internationally and translated into twelve languages.
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