ARCHIVE: Talley's Folly

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Produced and presented by The Cockpit and Burning Coal Theatre Company

Tally's Folly

13 - 29 October, 2022

Talley’s Folly has not played in London in over 40 years. The Cockpit and Burning Coal Theatre Company have put in a strong effort here. A 40 year wait for 97 minutes of fine performance – right on time. - Everything Theatre

Lanford Wilson's beautiful and funny Pulitzer Prize-winning 1980 play introduces us to Matt Friedman and Sally Talley, who come together, for better or for worse, in a gazebo on a river bank in Missouri in 1944.

"... a valentine to a classic romantic ideal: two lost souls finding in each other a respite from loneliness." - The New York Times

Matt Friedman lives and works as an accountant in St. Louis. One year ago, on a lark, he decided to take a vacation to the non-descript backward of Lebanon, Missouri. There he met the love of his life in the form of one 'Sally Talley'. But now, a year has passed and Sally cut off all communications with him.

On the 4th of July, 1944, as the world careens toward the end of the brutal Second World War, Matt waits in the dilapidated boathouse on the Talley estate. But will she come? And if she does, will Matt be able to persuade her that their romance of a year before was more than just a summer fling? Matt knows that in order to win Sally back, he will have to unravel the terrible past that haunts him. But he doesn't know is that Sally may have something just as troubling. Something that may forever keep them apart.

Lanford Wilson was one of the seminal figures of the 1960s New York City Off-Broadway movement. He helped found the legendary Circle Repertory Company in the West Village, a company that would produce such extraordinary actors as Christopher Reeve, Jeff Daniels, William Hurt, Swoozie Kurtz, Cynthia Nixon and Richard Thomas. Among the many playwrights that got their start or found solid footing in the New York theatre were Jon Robin Baitz, Marsha Norman and Craig Lucas.

Burning Coal Theatre Company is an award winning theatre from Raleigh,North Carolinai. Its 2014 production at the Cockpit of David Edgar's sprawling, three play Iron Curtain Trilogy received a 4 star review from Michael Billington in the Guardian. Its 2016 production of Dark Vanilla Jungle by Phillip Ridley played the Cockpit and received exceptionally strong critical response.

The production is directed by John Gulley, a professor of theatre studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. John has previously worked with Horton Foote, Ellen Burstyn and other American theatre icons.