THE STORY: According to Howard Taubman, the play “is a study of two old pensioners who find surcease from their fleabag of a hotel and their loneliness in meeting near the edge of a park lake. This time they have met to carry out an agreement to commit suicide together. Charlie is almost blind and full of truculence, the kind of man who resents the tree behind his back because it has been around 100 years and will outlast him. Max is gentle, introverted and, it develops, homosexual. Nothing happens between them, but the two talk—amiably, impatiently, bitterly—and reveal themselves and the sources of their despair.” In the end the suicide pact is abandoned, at least for the present, for both men become aware that it is often enough just to be alive and to search each day for the values that even the most wretched can perceive.
Paired on a double bill with
Mrs. Dally Has a Lover, this play was awarded the Vernon Rice Award.
Concerned with two aged and homeless men, the play explores deeply and perceptively into their past and present, drawing forth a telling realization of both their desperation and their dogged unwillingness to abandon what is left to them of life.
“Remember the name, William Hanley.” —The New York Times.
“William Hanley writes stunning dialogue.” —New York World-Telegram & Sun.
Included in the collection
Whisper into My Good Ear and Mrs. Dally Has a Lover.
