"Ladyhouse Blues" by Kevin O'Morrison [Theater program]

Abstract

Editorial Reviews Review "'Ladyhouse Blues,' is a strangely atmospheric play, which at times has the haunting quality of Chekhov. Its strength is two fold... the playwright knows how to give a play texture as well as structure, but also in the author's cleverly apt choice of a time and place. The place is St. Louis -- grassroots America - and the time is 1919... The whole cast consists of only five women, a youngish, widowed mother and her four daughters. Their menfolk are away, waiting to return from the war now ended in Europe ...Throughout the play we see hints of the new America to come ... suggestions of an America changing, of a society on the move ... few houses had electricity; refrigerators and vacuum cleaners were unknown, ethnic prejudice was widely expressed, the labor movement was beginning to be important, and even feminism was starting to emerge ... since 1919 the world has changed beyond recognition. And in a remarkably unaffected way, 'Ladyhouse Blues' ... is extremely moving and extraordinarily evocative." -- Clive Barnes, New York Times, 11/4/76

"Mr. O'Morrison has given it everything else in abundance: distinctive human voices, busy hands that belong to people, humor and despair as good companions, an aura of wistful poetry behind all that is so stubborn, so ignorant and so innocent. He is beyond question a playwright to be nourished and waited for." -- Walter Kerr, New York Times, 11/4/76