Talley's Folly

The McCarter Theater's second show of their 2008-2009 season is Talley's Folly, by Lanford Wilson, directed by his longtime collaborator, Marshall W. Mason, who directed the original production back in 1980, which won a Pulitzer Prize. It is a two-character play, done in real time without an intermission, and is a love story about two seemingly mismatched people, who are in reality perfectly matched.

Set on the fourth of July, 1944, in the small town of Lebanon, Missouri, the play was a prequel of sorts to Wilson's hugely successful play The Fifth of July. In that play a supporting character, Sally Friedman, carries around the ashes of her dead husband, Matt. Wilson was challenged by the actress who played that part to give her an idea of who Matt was. He suggested Judd Hirsch, and then planted a seed in his imagination, and he ended up writing a play about the night that Matt proposed to Sally. Judd Hirsch would play Matt.

For this production Matt is played by Richard Schiff, well-known to audiences for his stint as Toby on TV's The West Wing. Matt is an immigrant and a Jew, who is an accountant in St. Louis. The year before he met Sally Talley, the rebellious daughter of one of the prominent families in town, a family that had never even seen a Jew before. After being put off by Sally, Matt heads to her home, is chased off away from the house by her brother, and finds refuge in a boathouse. Sally comes down to tell him to go home, but over the course of an hour and a half secrets are shed and a lifetime bond is made.

I've seen or read several of Wilson's plays, and they all have a rich and beautiful language. This one starts with Matt speaking directly to the audience, telling them that it will all be done in 97 minutes, and that it will be like a waltz. He then wanders around the set, and what a magnificent one it is, designed by John Lee Beatty. The boathouse itself is rotting and entwined with vegetation. It is littered with the remnants of family life from long ago, like old ice skates (and a bottle of gin hidden by Sally). In conjunction the the lighting by Phil Monat, with suggests moonlight shimmering off the river, the entire evening is a pleasure to the eye.

That being said I wasn't tracking with the actors the entire time. Schiff works well with the character, a man who has a tragic past but is always chuckling. At times his accent is so thick, though, that I had trouble understanding what he was saying. As for Margot White, as Sally, I'm not sure she had the character down, but perhaps it's the writing. Sally is so antagonistic toward Matt through much of the play that you wonder what Matt sees in her. We are told repeatedly that her family find her an embarrassment (she's over 30, unmarried, and got fired as the Sunday school teacher for talking to the class about labor issues), but I'm not sure I saw that in White's performance. Part of the problem may be that the secret she is holding from Matt becomes pretty obvious at a certain point, and the audience has it figured out far earlier that he does.

Still, this play and production is a charming valentine (even if it is set on Independence Day) and an old-fashioned fish out of water love story.