Fifth of July
| Fifth of July | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Lanford Wilson |
| Date premiered | April 27, 1978 |
| Place premiered |
Circle Repertory Company New York City |
| Original language | English |
| Series | Talley Trilogy |
| Genre | Comedy |
| Setting | The Talley Place, a farm near Lebanon, Missouri. |
Fifth of July is a 1978 play by American playwright Lanford Wilson. Set in rural Missouri in 1977, it revolves around the Talley family and their friends, and focuses on the disillusionment with America in the wake of the Vietnam War. It premiered on Broadway in 1980 and was later produced as a made-for-television movie.
This is part of the Talley Trilogy, a series of Wilson plays revolving around the Talley family of Lebanon, Missouri. The other plays, both set on July 4, 1944, are Talley's Folly, a one-act dialogue between Sally Talley and her husband-to-be, Matthew Friedman, and Talley & Son, which tells the story of a power struggle between Sally's father and grandfather.
Kenneth Talley, Jr. is a gay paraplegic Vietnam veteran living in his childhood home with his boyfriend, botanist Jed Jenkins. At the beginning of the play, he is due to soon return to his former high school to teach English, but has decided not to. Visiting Ken and Jed are Ken's sister, June Talley, and her daughter, Shirley, as well as Ken and June's longtime friends, John Landis and his wife Gwen, inheritor of a large industrial copper conglomerate. John is ostensibly visiting to purchase the Talley House for Gwen to convert to a recording studio, so that she can have a career as a country singer. Unbeknownst to anyone but June, John and Ken, Shirley is John's daughter, and his visit has as much to do with a desire to gain joint custody of Shirley as it does with the house. Ken, meanwhile, believes that the singing career is a way of distracting Gwen, so that John could take control of her businesses. Other visitors include Weston Hurley, Gwen's guitarist, and Ken's aunt, Sally Talley, who a year after his death still has her husband Matt's ashes in a candy box. The story culminates with a "bidding war" between Sally Talley and John Landis for the house after it is revealed to everyone that Ken planned on selling it to Landis. Sally ultimately outbids Landis and says she will give it to Jed so he can finish his gardening.
...
Wikipedia