Word: talley
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...TALLEY'S FOLLY could boast only these accomplishments, it would be a successful melodrama, no more. It gains more stature by introducing the politics and history of the time it's set in--not in an obtrusive, doctrinaire way, but as a distant backdrop which only infrequently comes into full focus. Wilson doesn't so much expound the politics of America during World War II--the confusion on the left, the economic uncertainty, the awe at America's slowly unflexing muscles--as weave it into his characters' histories. At great length, with much defensive joking and shuffling of feet. Matt...
...Talley's folly" is a dilapidated boathouse, built by one of Sally's forebears. It is the scene for the two-hour confrontation between Matt and Sally that constitutes Wilson's play: they had had a brief affair the vear before and Matt has returned for one last attempt to win Sally from the arms of her bigoted family. The boathouse is also, in itself, a bizarrc extravagance; in Michael Anania's set design, it looks like a broken-down Baroque cathedral of navy-grey latticework, paint peeling and planks rotting. The "folly" folds its arms around the encounter between...
That conflict begins simply: Matt wants Sally to come away with him, and Sally wants Matt to leave alone. But as Wilson's smoothly polished conversational writing advances, with plenty of one-liners and an occasional sight gag. Talley's Folly turns from a straightforward romantic sit-com into a much more sensitive character evocation. Like a stripped-down Ibsen drama, it forces its two characters to excavate the most airless tunnels of their memories...
Their experiences had soured them to the American dream even before the Levittowns had started sprouting in every suburb. But there are no speeches about the horrors of the system in Talley's Folly--their dissatisfaction turns inward. It is on this ground that Wilson's two characters finally come to terms: for Matt, Sally is a woman who "thinks of herself as a human being, not a featherbed": for Sally, Matt is a man who stands outside the narrow-minded doltishness of her family. Their union at the end of Talley's Folly takes place right at the intersection...
...which Wilson daubs his optimistic ending. A band is playing, the moon shines over the lake, and...they kiss. The curtain would fall, only there is no curtain. Something about the cliched nostalgia of this moment cloys, after the lifelike dialogue and fully wrought characterization of the rest of Talley's Folly. But the moment is over quickly. And anyway, Wilson obviously knew what he was doing--his play has been a hit in New York and other cities, and won the Pulitzer Prize last year. If to sell a delicately unpretentious, inspirationally rich play Wilson had to tack...