THE STORIES: The first play,
Patio, is set in the backyard of a middle-class Texas home. Pearl, the younger sister, is preparing a going-away party for her older sister, Jewel, a beautician who is bored with small-town life and is heading off hopefully to the big city. As the two bustle about setting out food and putting up decorations, their conversation reveals progressively more and more of their differences and dreams—and of the emptiness that has pervaded both their lives. (2 women.)
In
Porch, the two characters are an ill and crotchety old woman and her restless spinster daughter. As they sit on their ramshackle front porch, complaining of the heat, the meanness of the mother and the aching frustration of the daughter are made vivid through dialogue that, while frequently funny, is also unerring in capturing the quiet desperation that besets them both. (2 women.)
