Book of Days at West Valley College

Lanford Wilson

West Valley College

Authors

• Lanford Wilson

Lanford Wilson's Book of Days is an alternately comic, tragic, and poignant murder mystery that examines the fascinating characters that populate Dublin, Missouri, a small town in the Heartland dominated by a Cheese Plant, a fundamentalist church, and a Community Theater. This is the most recent play by the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, first written and produced by Jeff Daniels' Purple Rose Theatre Company of Michigan. Wilson constructs this town literally out of thin, theatrical air. The play itself is fascinating in its ability to make these people seem utterly real, by finding a balance between comic human observations and deep character drama. In the end, we see a town walking the thin line between example of American propriety and ticking time bomb, ready to explode.