About the Play:

The Widow's Blind Date is a full-length drama by Israel Horovitz. Building steadily, this gripping story of macho posturing, awakening memories and revenge begins with the seemingly lighthearted reunion of three former high school classmates, two men who never left the small town in which they were raised, and a sophisticated young widow who returns to it. Her visit sets off a chain of rivalry and then moves on, inexorably, to a shattering, explosive denouement.

The Widow's Blind Date involves just three characters, set in a wastepaper processing plant in a blue-collar Massachusetts town. Two working-class buddies, Archie and George, are drinking beer and swapping stories, mostly about their apparently extensive sexual conquests. Archie mentions that Margy, a friend from high school who moved away from the area and is now a widow, has invited him to join her for a dinner. When she arrives to pick Archie up, the mood of the play shifts. Suddenly, the play's original macho bantering takes on new and dangerous meanings. Margy will subtly set the two men against each other while gradually revealing her contempt for her former classmates, whose lives have remained in a rut, she says, while she married well and went on to bigger and better things living in the big city. But this is only the beginning of Margy's complaint. Piece by piece Margy reconstructs a night, fifteen years ago, when she was gang-raped after a party by a group of boys who included not only Archie and George, but also her blind brother, whom she's come back to town to visit. In the end, Margy gets what she came for: her revenge, and a violent, breath-stopping exorcism of the guilt and remorse that has plagued them all throughout the years.

The Widow's Blind Date premiered in 1983 at Gloucester Stage Company in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It opened off-Broadway in 1989 at the Circle in the Square Downtown in New York City and has been produced around the world.

Cast: 1 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Terrifying and real ... a masterpiece." — Los Angeles Times

"Mystery, menace, confrontation, violence, resolution – these are the phases of Israel Horovitz's remarkably naturalistic play The Widow's Blind Date." — New York Post

"…the playwright's toughest, grittiest play." — Variety

"…packs a wallop that few plays will be able to equal…." — Brooklyn Free Press

"The Widow's Blind Date is a scorcher." — Boston Globe

"The Widow's Blind Date is not for the faint of heart. It is for anyone who appreciates a compelling story, tautly written." — BroadwayWorld

About the Playwright:

Israel Horovitz (1939-2020) was an American playwright, director, and actor who first came to prominence in the counterculture melting pot of Greenwich Village in the winter of 1967-68, with four critically acclaimed plays produced Off Broadway. Since then, nearly 70 Horovitz plays have been performed throughout the USA, and dozens have been translated and performed in as many as 25 languages, worldwide. He won numerous awards, including the OBIE (twice), the Emmy, Priz du Plaisir de theatre (for Line In Paris), Prix du Jury (Cannes Film Festival), the New York Drama Desk Award, and Award in Literature of The American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Eliot Norton Prize, and many others.