THE STORIES: The first play,
Solitaire, is set in a chilling, computerized future, where marriage has been abolished, life is lived in mechanized motel rooms, and voluntary self-destruction is a citizen's ultimate service to the state. Yearning for the simple, forgotten warmth of family life, Sam Bradley seeks out an illicit, underground operation which provides for a surrogate domesticity—wife, children, dinner on the table. For a precious moment he is transported back into a way of life now lost but fondly remembered. But then his time is up, and he must return to his electronic cell, to breathe the last of his allotted air and to cherish what memories remain before oblivion consumes him. (4 men, 3 women.)
The second play,
Double Solitaire, set in the present, concerns an older couple about to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary and their son and daughter-in-law, whose marriage is pulling apart. The action is a series of sharp, short confrontations, that lay bare the lives of all concerned—their failures, their loneliness, and their quiet and desperate search for something to bring them alive again. Subtle and compassionate, yet unfailingly honest, the play shows its people both as they are and as they want to be, and illuminates the interior truths in which must lie the deeper meaning of human existence. (4 men, 3 women.)
