The Madness of Lady Bright

The Madness of Lady Bright
Written by	Lanford Wilson
Characters	Leslie Bright Boy (Voices) Girl (Voices)
Date premiered	May 1964
Place premiered	Caffe Cino, Greenwich Village, New York
Original language	English
Genre	Monologue
Setting	New York City, 1960s

The Madness of Lady Bright is a short play by Lanford Wilson, among the earliest of the gay theatre movement. It was first performed at Joe Cino's Caffe Cino in May 1964 and went on to tour internationally, appearing in revivals to the present day. It has been cited as the first Off-Off-Broadway production to receive mainstream critical attention, and earned its original lead actor, Neil Flanagan, an Obie award. The play, substantially a monologue delivered by its aging drag queen protagonist, has been characterized as among the first to portray gay characters in an unsensational way, and as one of the last of Wilson's oeuvre to make substantial use of experimental devices before his adoption of a more realist approach.

The Madness of Lady Bright is among Wilson's earliest produced plays, following Home Free!, and So Long At The Fair. It was the first of his works to present explicitly gay themes, and has been called one of the earliest American plays by any author to focus predominantly on gay material. Critics have noted that the play contains one of Wilson's last uses of such experimental devices as the presence of "unreal" characters, before electing for a more realist style from the mid-1960s onwards. The "unreal" characters here are two figures, named only as Boy and Girl: they both give voice to the criticisms Leslie has encountered throughout his life, and represent a range of dramatis personae - old friends and lovers - whom he recalls.

Wilson wrote the play during slow shifts while working as a receptionist at the Americana Hotel (today the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers) in New York. Responsible for the low-traffic night-time reservations desk, he had ample time to produce his manuscript on the hotel's typewriter, an experience he likened to Tennessee Williams's practice of writing while working selling subway tokens from a booth. A desk-clerk colleague of his at the Americana was purportedly among the inspirations for protagonist Leslie Bright. Wilson cited his dislike of the play Funnyhouse of a Negro, by Adrienne Kennedy, as among his influences in writing the work:

...
Wikipedia