Introduction & Overview of Talley's Folly by Lanford Wilson

Talley's Folly Introduction

Lanford Wilson's romantic comedy Talley's Folly is the second of three plays in what came to be known as Wilson's Talley Family series. The first play in the saga, 5th of July (later renamed Fifth of July), takes place in 1977, as members of the Talley family struggle with capitalism and the Vietnam War. Among the characters is the recently widowed Aunt Sally, who values the family home more than she values money. When the actress playing Sally in the original production of Fifth of July asked Wilson for help in understanding her character, he wrote Talley's Folly to show how Sally and her husband Matt became a couple in 1944. Two years later Wilson added a third episode to the story, Talley & Son, first produced in 1981.

Talley's Folly shows one evening in the courtship of two unlikely lovers, Sally Talley and Matt Friedman. Sally is from...
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