The Day Emily Married

The Day Emily Married is a play by Horton Foote. The play takes place in the fictitious town of Harrison, Texas, where Foote has set many of his plays.

The Day Emily Married
Written byHorton Foote
CharactersSadie
Lyd Davis "Belle"
Emily
Richard Murray
Addie
Lee Davis
Lucy Fay
Alma Nash
Maud Barker
Date premieredMay/June 1997
Place premieredSilver Spring Stage
Original languageEnglish
SettingEarly summer of 1956 in Harrison, Texas

Setting

The setting is in the early summer of 1955 and takes place in Harrison, Texas. (Southern Texas town, 50 miles southwest of Houston and 40 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico)[1]

Synopsis

A newlywed couple, Emily and Richard Murray, move into the house of her parents. Emily had divorced her first husband. She soon finds herself caught between her seemingly-ideal husband and her family. Her parents, Lyd and Lee Davis, are loving but also controlling. Lee plans on selling his own farm and some property, to help Richard set up a business. [2]

Productions

The play premiered at the Silver Spring Stage in Silver Spring, Maryland in May/June 1997. It was directed by Jack Sbarbori and the cast included Eugenia Sorgnit (Sadie), Gay Hill (Lyd Davis "Belle"), Stephanie Mumford (Emily), Bob Justis (Richard Murray), Sunday Wynkoop (Addie), Rob Peters (Lee Davis), Elizabeth Lawrence (Lucy Fay), Patty Richmond (Alma Nash), and Marilyn Osterman (Maud Barker).

The Day Emily Married was presented by the Lost World theatre company, Whittier, California, in July 2000. According to Playbill, the play was written in the 1960s but never performed until the Silver Spring Stage amateur workshop, the Lost World being the first fully staged production.[3] The Lost World company had presented a staged reading of the play in November 1998, featuring Peri Gilpin as Emily.[4][5]

The play opened the Primary Stages 20th anniversary season. The play opened Off-Broadway at the 59 East 59th Street Theatre on August 3, 2004 and closed on August 29, 2004. Directed by Michael Wilson, the set design was by Jeff Cowie, costume design by David C. Woolard, lighting design by Rui Rita, and sound design by Andre Plues. It starred Estelle Parsons (Lyd Davis "Belle"), Hallie Foote (Emily), Biff McGuire (Lee Davis), James Colby (Richard Murray), Terri Keane (Alma Nash), Delores Mitchell (Addie), and Pamela Payton-Wright (Maud Cleveland).[2][1][6]

Critical response

Elyse Sommer, in her review for CurtainUp, wrote: "The pleasure of The Day Emily Married comes from the unobtrusive excellence Foote still extracts from that bone and what the actors do with the roles he's written for them."[1] Ben Brantley in his New York Times review wrote "Even at its most forced, The Day Emily Married emanates an infectious, eerily familiar melancholy that keeps pricking at the memory like a wandering melody. I can think of no other playwright who is as harsh in his sentimentality as Mr. Foote is. His plays may radiate the burnished nostalgia of sepia-tone photographs, but he insists on your feeling that there is more ice than fire in their glow."[7]

gollark: I'm sure not *everyone* there is Mr W[REDACTED].
gollark: Do you have "makerspaces" locally, perhaps?
gollark: No, not that.
gollark: I'm sure there's some vaguely localized in-person activity which is fairly likely to have interesting people doing it.
gollark: > implying WORK is likely to HAVE people AT it

References
  1. Sommer, Elyse. "'The Day Emily Married', a CurtainUp review" curtainup.com, August 4, 2004
  2. "Off-Broadway Cast Set for Horton Foote's The Day Emily Married at Primary Stages", Playbill.com
  3. Lefkowitz, David. "Foote Find: L.A.'s Lost World to Celebrate The Day Emily Married, July 14-30" Playbill, July 14, 2000
  4. Jones, Kenneth. "CA Director Unearths 'Lost' Foote Play for Nov. 11 Reading w/Peri Gilpin" Playbill, November 11, 1998
  5. Phillips, Michael. "Right at Home on Stage" Los Angeles Times, July 18, 2000
  6. The Day Emily Married lortel.org, accessed November 7, 2015
  7. "The Day Emily Married". The New York Times.
Bibliography
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