Overview
In this compact full length, Nigro returns to his favorite territory,
the bloodstained hilly country of east Ohio, to tell the story of an odd
young man named Frank Roosevelt, an orphan who comes to Armitage, Ohio
to find his mother. He's befriended there by the local priest, Father
Wiggley, and given the job of taking care of the church cemetery. But
the private and inarticulate Frank turns out not to be the simple minded
innocent that Father Wiggley has first thought he is. Frank beats him
at chess and then begins spending far too much time with Annabella
Tosca, Father Wiggley's very young and attractive new housekeeper. As
Father Wiggley's concern grows, the ghostlike Lilias Walesiak wanders
the cemetery at night, looking in the windows of the rectory while her
sister Sadie Prikosovits tries to cover up long buried secrets that
threaten to bring Father Wiggley's world crashing down around him. This
is a funny, eerie, mysterious, and powerful investigation of repressed
emotion, sin, and the possibility of redemption, told in a fluid back and
forth tapestry that builds to a powerful and shocking climax. In The Sexton & Other Plays.