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The Place: A Suburban Living Room
The People: Peggy, Roger, Julia, and Floyd
Join the fun when the Jewel Box Theatre presents A.R. Gurney’s satirical comedy, The Fourth Wall. The play is being directed by Steve Stolee.
The Fourth Wall is a tongue-in-cheek satire of art and American politics during the recent era of the George W. Bush administration, set in the suburban upstate New York home of an upper middle class couple. At its center is the tale of a frazzled suburban woman who rebels against the complacency of her friends, marriage, the government—even her living room furniture.
Disturbed by the state of current politics and sensing that some sort of audience exists beyond the parameters of her living room, suburbanite housewife Peggy rearranges her living room to assemble a stage set, in the hopes of breaking through to the other side. Her furniture now faces one wall—the "fourth wall"—which she has left bare (which is really the audience).
Her husband Roger can't stand it. Feeling he needs reinforcement to cope with his wife's lapse in decorating sensibility, Roger requests the aid of an old family friend and decorator from Manhattan, Julia, who agrees that Peggy has gone a little haywire. More ponderous still is the tendency of everyone who enters the living room to begin performing as if in a play or even a musical—occasionally someone is compelled to break into a Cole Porter song—even provoking Julia to suggest that Roger put Peggy away to more easily facilitate an affair.
Roger also enlists the help of local theater professor Floyd to come over and help bring Peggy's "play" to a close. But Roger's plan backfires, as Floyd is sympathetic to Peggy's plight and urges her to break through the fourth wall in order to get in touch with her feelings.
Gurney's popular plays, including Love Letters, Sylvia, and The Dining Room, are often compared to the work of novelist John Cheever, their situational satire frequently centering around the foibles of the well-bred upper-middle-class and its supposed sophistication—which usually turns out to be anything but sophisticated. Often, there is a backdrop of war and collective suburban American angst. His plays are urbane, laced with literary and current-event references, but well written to suit a general audience. The Fourth Wall, for all its cultured framing, is full of laugh out loud gags and punch lines.
"It's a whimsical meditation on the theatre—its history and its conceits, its degradation in the video age, and its enduring potential for enabling people to connect. And, above all, it's a clever, playful prayer for its survival."
—The Chicago Sun Times
The Fourth Wall is directed by Island Theatre cofounder, Steve Stolee, directing for the first time at Jewel Box Theatre. The Cast includes Jim Alexander, as Roger; Shawna Fancher, as Julia; Kathy Currie, as Peggy; and Fred Saas, as Floyd.
Set designed by Will Langemack; lighting and sound design by Larry Blaine; stage manager, Rilla Hughes; props and production manager, Pat Scott.
Don't miss the rehearsal photos at the bottom of this page. |
