Overview
A long one act, really capable of being a full evening of theatre with
no act break. In rural Pendragon County, Ohio, at the end of the 19th
century, the very beautiful Barbary Fox and her little sister are
orphaned as children when their drunken parents turn a wagon over in the
creek late one Halloween night on their way back from a party, dressed
as two halves of a zebra. Her uncle Rem vows to raise them at his house
by the dump, next to the fireworks factory and the chicken plucking
plant, but their childhood is a nightmare. Rem is a drunkard who tries
to reform by drinking vinegar, but ends up locking Barbary in the fruit
cellar every night so she won't run out into thunderstorms looking for
zebras. Later, she's rescued by a shady character named Bert Astor, who
may have been complicit in Rem's death. Bert and Barbary live next door
to Silas Quiller and his wife Magenta, and their lives become
grotesquely entangled with the lives of their neighbors. Bert seems to
be blackmailing Silas. Magenta plays the piano and drinks, and peeks
through the window when Barbary takes baths. Seen partly through the
eyes of Barbary's very troubled daughter Gretchen, as she attempts to
put together the fragments of knowledge she has about her mother's life
and mysterious death, this play weaves a darkly funny tapestry, back and
forth in time, as we gradually put together the pieces of a bizarre and
tragic puzzle. In Barbary Fox & Other Plays.