An Evening for Merlin Finch.

By Charles Dizenzo

THE STORY: In the words of Edith Oliver, the play deals with the horrors of family life-with the warfare, both guerrilla and open, primarily between father and son but also between mother and grandmother. The characters are, and are meant to be, types. When the play opens, Mother is sitting with a hair dryer wrapped around her head, loudly singing a show tune and stopping occasionally to weep over a heartrender in a ladies' magazine. Father, a businessman-at one point, he gives us an extremely savage and funny rundown of his humdrum working day-cannot stand his son. Merlin, the son, is a teenager who prefers books and band practice to team sports, and whose dislike of his father is just as overt. Mother spends most of her time trying to make peace between father and son. ('That must be Fanny and Jack,' she says when the doorbell rings in the midst of a row. 'Calm down, and be more typical.') The play has no plot to speak of, which doesn't matter a bit. There is a lot of nutty stage business, all of which pays off, but it is Mr. Dizenzo's stylish humor and control of language that are so encouraging.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822203642
• ISBN13: 9780822203643
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Dramatist's Play Service
• Length: 72 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.3" x 5.5"