Theater J Announces TALLEY'S FOLLY

For the third show of its season Around Town, Theater J brings Lanford Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning romantic comedy Talley's Folly to GALA Hispanic Theatre December 7 - 30. A funny and heartwarming theatrical duet, Talley's Folly, is set on a moonlit night in 1944 Missouri, where Matt Friedman, a middle-aged Jewish accountant, has only one chance to win the heart of Sally Talley, a 31 year-old 'old maid' from a bigoted Protestant family. After a lifetime of believing they'll never truly belong in the world around them, they reawaken one another to love, ultimately finding that they do belong - together.

The second play in Wilson's heralded "Talley's Trilogy," Talley's Folly was nominated for a Tony Award in 1980. Theater J produced Talley's Folly to great acclaim over 15 years ago, and Artistic Director Adam Immerwahr has chosen to revisit it especially for Theater J's season Around Town. Says Immerwahr: "the historic Tivoli Theatre is a glorious space and adds a lovely patina to a play in which setting plays such a central role. Paige Hathaway's gorgeous, evocative, and romantic set is a perfect fit for the space."

Immerwahr also leapt at the chance to work with married-team Aaron Posner (director) and Erin Weaver (actor), two of the brightest stars of the DC theater community. Posner's most recent Theater J projects were Everything is Illuminated and Broken Glass. Weaver makes her Theater J debut in the role of Sally Tally and out-of-town actor John Taylor Phillips makes his DC debut as Matt Friedman. Posner has worked with Phillips before and calls him "an exceptional actor...I feel very lucky to have the chance to bring him here."

As to what draws him to Talley's Folly, Posner calls it

"a nearly perfect play. It is small, but mighty. Like a diamond... or the human heart itself, perhaps. It is a humble and beautiful story- almost as much a fable or tale or romantic love poem as a play. It is also what I think of as a Capital "C" Comedy, in that it promises a world in which that which is broken will ultimately be healed... and all things will work out as they should in the end. Shakespeare and many others mark this promise with a marriage- or multiple marriages- and so, in many ways, does Lanford Wilson in this hopeful, human, warm, winning, and genuinely heartwarming Comedy."

Theater J's 2018-2019 season is taking place around town at four different DC venues while the historic Edlavitch DCJCC undergoes renovation. The final show of the season is The Jewish Queen Lear at Georgetown University's Davis Performing Arts Center, March 13 - April 7, 2019.

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