Grotesque Lovesongs

Written by the author of The Curate Shakespeare As You Like It, Seascape with Sharks and Dancer, and other plays, this quirky comedy about a family in Indiana enchanted audiences at New York's WPA Theatre. Pete and John live with their mother and father, a horticulturist. A pretty young woman named Romy is engaged to Johnny, who has just inherited a ton of money from a family friend, Mr. Agajanian. Pete pesters his mother about why Johnny received the entire inheritance until she admits that Mr. Agajanian was Johnny's father. Stunned, Johnny retreats to the greenhouse and finds Pete and Romy making love. Everyone but Johnny is haunted by a traumatic past experience: the mother by her affair with Agajanian; the father by the memory of his first true love, a Terre Haute whore; Pete by his failed marriage to a circus con artist, and Romy by her two failed marriages. All of the characters but Johnny also know what they want: Louise and Dan want the contentment of their marriage; Romy wants to bake bread in a big old house, and she wants Pete, who finally admits that he wants her, too. Finally, Johnny realizes that what he wants is to go to Nashville to be a singer of sad love songs.