THE STORY: The setting is a small town in Arkansas, the time 1951. Tyler Biars, a young soldier just out of basic training, is at home visiting his mother and sister before being shipped off to Korea. Brimming with charm and sensual magnetism, Tyler basks in the doting admiration of his family, until his idyll is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Sarah Johnson, a Georgia farm girl who is both the sister of one of Tyler’s army buddies and one of his amorous conquests. Sarah, who is some years older than Tyler, is also pregnant—and while the flustered Tyler promises to set things straight what he does, instead, is to sneak away ahead of schedule, leaving his mother and sister to deal with the problem. His departure brings on the crux of the play as Sarah, awkward and unwanted, gradually wins the respect and affection of Tyler’s mother and sister with her quiet fortitude and instinctive good nature. She becomes, in truth, a member of the family, and when in the end she stoically accepts the fact of her abandonment and returns to Georgia, her departure leaves the others as bereft and saddened as they were, for very different reasons, by the irresponsible exit of their now discredited son and brother.
This eloquent and affecting study of three women coming to terms with a crisis not of their own.
“…a lovely new play by a promising playwright…it is consistently poignant and compelling.” —Variety.
“By the end of Miss Watson’s play, her female characters have been forced to find a new way to define their lives—to find the light within themselves.” —The New York Times.
“…a play about women learning to draw closer in tenderness…” —New York Post.
