Home Free!
| Home Free! | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Lanford Wilson |
| Date premiered | 1964 |
| Place premiered | New York City |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | One-act play |
Home Free! is a one-act play by American playwright Lanford Wilson. It was first produced at Caffe Cino in 1964, a coffeehouse and small theatre run by Joseph Cino, a pioneer of the Off-Off-Broadway theatre movement. It is one of Wilson's earliest plays.
The play premiered at the Caffe Cino in New York City in January 1964, and revived there in August 1964. It was directed by William Archibald.
It was produced in February 1965 at the New Playwrights series at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York City. The play was part of a production of three plays; the others were Up To Thursday by Sam Shepard and Balls by Paul Foster. This series was headed by Edward Albee, Richard Barr and Clinton Wilder. The play featured Michael Warren Powell.
There are two major characters, Lawrence and Joanna, as well as Edna and Claypone, who are referred to by the characters but who have no lines and are not mentioned in the Dramatis personae or in the stage directions, which implies that they are fictional characters in the minds of Lawrence and Joanna. It is implied, but never explicitly stated, that Lawrence and Joanna are brother and sister; it is also implied that they are having an incestuous relationship, which has resulted in Joanna's pregnancy.
Lawrence begins the play, delivering a lesson on astronomy, in particular the Pleiades. In the course of describing the effects of universal expansion (see Hubble's law) he becomes excited and jumps around the room, imitating the stars being flung in every direction. Eventually he gets tired and starts muttering to himself about Joanna's return from the grocery store, and what she has in the 'Surprise Box,' a brightly colored box that Lawrence and Joanna use to give surprise gifts to each other.
Joanna enters in a huge panic, having been seen by some frightening 'outside' entity called Pruneface, Wienerface or both. She is pregnant. They engage in a number of strange conversations seemingly at random, in a playful manner. Joanna tells of an encounter she had on a subway with a college-age boy, and Lawrence accuses her of having sex with him. They play various games, including one where Joanna is a queen and Lawrence commands Edna and Claypone to fetch her various things. All of a sudden, however, he halts the game with the line: "You're not a queen, you're a whore."
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