Word: sloper
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...debut was a rousing success, William Wyler's 1949 film adaptation won an Oscar for Olivia de Havilland, and 1994's Broadway sell-out revival won a trove of Tonys. The Lyric Stage production, directed by Polly Hogan and starring Paula Plum as Catherine and Michael Bradshaw as Dr. Sloper, deserves similar accolades...
...Austin Sloper, a prominent New York doctor, first enters after a day spent delivering someone's child. His solicitous care of other families stands in cruel ironic contrast to the distant, detached husk he becomes in his own household. His daughter, by contrast, exists in perpetually stunted emotional tumult. In her first line, she seeks approval from her aunt Lavinia (Eve Johnson), holding the skirt of her new dress, nervously asking, "Do you like the color...
...inevitably disparaged by a father who asserts that "You are good for nothing unless you are clever." Catherine has so internalized his belief in her inadequacies that she insists to her aunt she never thinks of love or marriage. You know what that means. Into the Sloper brownstone swoops Morris Townsend (Diego Arciniegas), a distant cousin-of-a-cousin just returned from some months in Europe. Translation: he is dashing, lively, vaguely exotic, and unpreoccupied with the social stringencies of Old New York...
Jaws drop in shock as Morris begins paying romantic attentions to Catherine. Both of Catherine's aunts, Lavinia and Elizabeth (Sheila Ferrini), delight in her unexpected good fortune. Dr. Sloper is predictably skeptical, for two specific reasons. One, he cannot fathom that anyone would be interested in "such a dull girl." More to the point, he has not forgotten that Catherine does have one obviously pleasing attribute: an annual inheritance of $30,000. As the program helpfully imparts, Catherine's annuity compares to about half a million Big Ones...
...when Catherine asks, "Are you sure that you love me," he answers only, "Can you doubt it?" Still, he seems to harbor genuine affection for her, and as Elizabeth and Lavinia suggest, if a caring husband can be attracted by the prospect of wealth, who loses? Dr. Sloper, however, refuses to see his fortune so brazenly pursued or so cannily procured. To the aunts' protests, he thunders with casually cruel frankness, "She must not love people who don't deserve to be loved...