Part 1: Chapter 1 Summary

The tone of Revolutionary Road is set in the first chapter as the Laurel Players stage their first production before an eager, expectant audience in suburban Connecticut in 1955. Somewhat tenuously, the New York director hired to work with the amateur actors gives them a pep talk the night before the opening, telling them they've got what it takes to put across a stunning performance. But a series of forgotten lines, backstage noises, onstage bumbling, and just bad acting doom the performance. The play is further handicapped by the fact that the leading man is sick and unable to act, so the director fills in because he knows the lines but does not fit the part physically at all. The opening does serve to introduce April Wheeler as a beautiful, poised young woman, possessed of a lot of stage presence.

During intermission...