About the Play:

Talley's Folly has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues and Female/Male Scenes.

Talley's Folly is a full-length a romantic comedy by Lanford Wilson. Part of a cycle of plays begun with Fifth of July, this play deals with the courtship of the young Sally Talley, still living at home, and her Jewish suitor, Matt Friedman. They had met and briefly romanced the previous summer. Now, a year later, he's returned to propose marriage. Talley's Folly is a gentle, funny two-hander, lovingly scripted as they once and for all settle their feelings for each other.

Talley's Folly looks at the courtship of Aunt Sally and her beloved husband, Matt. The scene is the ornate, abandoned Victorian boathouse (the "folly" of the title) on a lake in Lebanon, Missouri; the time 1944. Matt Friedman, a 42-year-old Jewish left-leaning immigrant accountant from St. Louis, has arrived to plead his love to 31-year-old Sally, once-promising daughter of the Talley garment factory dynasty – wealthy, conservative and Protestant. Bookish, erudite, she's reluctant, not so much for their Jewish-gentile differences, but because – even though she feels trapped living at home – she's afraid of commitment. Matt refuses to accept Sally's rebuffs and her fears that her family would never approve of their marriage. Charming and indomitable, he gradually overcomes her defences, telling his innermost secrets to his loved one and, in return, learning hers as well. Both, it turns out, are afraid, and both are very lonely, at an age when loneliness almost seems to be their destiny. Gradually he awakens Sally to the possibilities of a life together until, in the final, touching moments of the play, it is clear that they are two kindred spirits who have truly found each other – two "lame ducks" who, in their union, will find a wholeness rare in human relationships. The second play chronologically in his celebrated Talley Trilogy which chronicles several decades in the fictional lives of the Talley family of Lebanon, Missouri, Lanford Wilson's home town.

Talley's Folly premiered in 1979 by Off-Broadway's famed Circle Repertory Company and later moved to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. The play then debuted on Broadway, opening at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in 1980, winning the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award as best play of the season.. Since then the play travelled to London at the Lyric Hammersmith in 1982, was revived off Broadway at the Laura Pels Theater in 2013. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops and is regularly performed in regional repertory, college, and community theatre productions.

Cast: 1 female, 1 male

What people say:

"…Mr. Wilson is one of our most gifted playwrights, a dramatist who deals perceptively with definably American themes…he introduces us to two wonderful people, humanizing and warming them with the radiance of his abundant talent. Talley's Folly is a play to savor and cheer." — The New York Times

"It is perhaps the simplest, the most lyrical play Wilson has written – a funny, sweet, touching and marvelously written and contrived love poem for an apple and an orange." — New York Post

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.