Synopsis
Ancestral Voices
Published by Broadway Play Publishing
3 Male 2 Female
"...A R Gurney's genteel and gently comic ANCESTRAL VOICES...leaving exceedingly pleasant memories in its wake. Mr Gurney's play is performed in the manner of his popular epistolary drama LOVE LETTERS, with the cast reading from scripts while seated on a bare stage.... The hybrid Mr Gurney has produced is as elegantly faceted as a marquise diamond. What distinguishes the tales is the rueful maturity with which it is recounted by a man gazing back over the decades. The characters feel like fully fleshed-out cousins of the denizens of the novels of John Cheever, to whom the dramatist is often compared. The production is not dramatic in the strictest sense, either; the flare-ups in this confrontation-averse clan flicker only for instants. Yet isn't that the way a lot of families let off steam?" Peter Marks, The New York Times
"...with ANCESTRAL VOICES, the result is a wistful, colorful companion piece to LOVE LETTERS. That two-character epistolary goldmine, of course, has been similarly read on stages, cruise ships and wherever pairs of actors hunger for quick-study, quality work. Given the new one's larger cast requirements, it is not likely to duplicate the phenomenal popularity of its predecessor. The story of unraveling expectations in a society that considered itself a constant, however, is no less captivating a human document of recent but very foreign times." Linda Winer, Newsday Originally performed at Lincoln Center Theater, New York - Spiral-bound text for onstage use