About the Play:

Ludlow Fair has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues and Female/Female Scenes.

Home Free! has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues.

The volume Ludlow Fair and Home Free! contains two one-act plays by Lanford Wilson. These lively, funny, and moving pieces were first produced simply at the legendary coffee house theatre Caffe Cino and helped kick start the vibrant Off-Off Broadway fringe theatre scene in 1960s New York City. Ludlow Fair is an engrossing, funny comedic drama that offers a revealing glimpse into the hopes, dreams and problems of two young girl roommates. Home Free! is a drama concerned with agoraphobic siblings keeping a terrible secret. The two have shut themselves in their tiny apartment, which serves as the perfect playground. The plays may be presented separately or as an evening of entertainment.

Ludlow Fair is the story of two very different roommates. Rachel is a neurotic serial-dater trying to get over a boy. Agnes is a wise-cracking loner just trying to get over a cold. But they both have to cope with each other and their loud neighbours. Rachel is in a fit. Joe, the latest in her long line of boyfriends, has stolen money from her and her roommate, Agnes. Rachel turned him in to the authorities, who discovered that he had a long history of crime. Rachel is now remorseful and claims to love him still. Agnes has a wiser view. Ludlow Fair was successfully produced Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and in London. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed because it provides strong roles for two women. (Premiered in 1965 at Caffe Cino; Cast: 2 female)

What people say:

"…charmingly well written, with a warm, delicate, and exact perception of human feelings and predicaments." — Village Voice

"Lanford Wilson is a brilliant playwright." — Newsweek

Home Free! concerns a brother and sister who live out a childlike fantasy as husband and wife. In their mid-20s, agoraphobic Lawrence and his sister Joanna have cut themselves off from the world "outside," living in a cluttered playroom which they share with two imaginary companions, "Edna" and "Claypone." Surrounded by toys, including a brightly coloured miniature Ferris wheel, they have created an atmosphere of almost suffocating intimacy and remove, where play becomes the business of life and reality an alien force to be kept at bay. But life intrudes all the same, and their fantasies have betrayed them into Joanna's pregnancy. Yet even this cruel irony can only be dealt with in almost antic, unreal terms, as though it too were but a facet of the dream world that Lawrence and Joanna have constructed about themselves. They continue to play and talk idly of future plans until the birth pangs begin and their house of illusion comes crashing down. But still Lawrence cannot leave, cannot face the world beyond their door. Instead he sends "Edna" for the doctor, and as Joanna's life ebbs away he holds her hand and talks of the new toy that he has made for her and hidden away in their Surprise Box of secret treasures. Warmly received in its Off-Broadway presentation a brilliant, Home Free! is written in a haunting, evocative style which both illuminates and softens the elemental pathos of its subject. It is an engrossing play that has been widely produced by fringe, college, and community theatre groups. (Premiered in 1964 at Caffe Cino; Cast: 1 female, 1 male)

What people say:

"A poignant fairy-tale quality pervades this story of a brother and his incestuously pregnant sister and helps the play achieve an astonishingly tender tension between sickness and sweetness." — Time Magazine

About the Playwright:

Lanford Wilson (1937-2011) was one of the most distinguished American playwrights of the late 20th century. He was instrumental in drawing attention to Off-Off Broadway, where his first works were staged in the mid-1960s. He was also among the first playwrights to move from that milieu to renown on wider stages, ascending to Off Broadway, and then to Broadway, within a decade of his arrival in New York. His work has also long been a staple of regional theatres throughout the United States. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.