Back to All Events

Talley's Folly


Lanford Wilson’s 1980 Pulitzer Prize-winning Valentine of a play. On July 4, 1944, Matt Friedman, a 40+ Jewish accountant and in love for the first time in his life, drives 200 miles to the heart of Missouri farm country to propose to Sally Talley, ten years younger and seemingly not interested. Having been met at the door by Sally’s shotgun toting brother—Jews not welcome here—Matt takes refuge in a Victorian folly of a boathouse on the nearby river, where Sally finds him. Cue moonlight and music (waltz, please), willows and woods. Can one enchanted evening change the course of two lives? Once upon a time—there was hope in the land.