Entertainment

Tonight I'm going to see a play "The Rimers of Eldritch", which is being performed by our local Community College, and is directed by my step son-in-law. I did a bit of research on the play, and thought I'd share what I found:

The play was written by Lanford Wilson in 1967, and according to GLBTQ.com and Arts For Life, Wilson was born April 10, 1937 in Lebanon, Mo. Wilson is an openly gay man and many of his plays contain gay themes and characters. He began his career in the 1960s at the Café Cino writing one-act plays. From there he moved to doing off-Broadway places with the "Balm in Gilead" and "The Rimers of Eldritch." He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for his play "Talley's Folly" and later started the Circle Reparatory Company.

"The Rimers of Eldritch" is a mystery about a small town where a murder has taken place.Martin Gottfried, a well-known theater critic, said this about the play:"It is a simple one. A mystery, really. A man has been murdered. The mystery is, who he is, who murdered him and what were the circumstances? And to solve it, Wilson looks at the outsides and insides of his tiny, Middle Western town. He looks at a middle-aging woman who falls in love with the young man who comes to work in her cafe. "He looks at a coarse, nasty woman mistreating her senile mother, who is obsessed with visions of Eldritch being evil and headed for blood-spilling. He looks at a tender relationship between a young man and a dreamy, crippled girl.

But Wilson sees far more than this. He is grasping the very fabric of Bible Belt America, with its catchword morality ("virgin," "God-fearing") and its capability for the vicious. "He senses the rhythm of its life and the cruelty it can impose. He understands the speech patterns of its loveless gossips, its sex-hungry boys, its compassionless preachers, and its car-conscious blondes."In the end his portrait of Eldritch is full length, and the truth of its revelations will be pondered long after the stage lights have dimmed and the play has ended. " he said. "The Rimers of Eldritch" was also made into a television movie in 1974 and starred Susan Sarandon and Rue McClenahan.

I'm still getting to know my way around here, and wanted to post a photo vintage promo of of the movie with Sarandon and Rue McClenahan. Alas, I can't figure out how to do it... For those who are interested, here's a link to it:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0000639JQ/ref=dp_image_text_0?ie=UTF8&n=404272&s=video