A Lovely Sunday For Creve Coeur

A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur is playing at Theatre at St. Clements located at 423 West 46th Street. The play runs one hour forty five minutes with no intermission. It closes on October 21, 2018.

Tennesse Williams (March 26, 2011-February 25, 1983) is the playwright. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama for A Streetcar Named Desire (1948) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). This one act play was published in 1978. It premiered at the Spoleto Arts festival in Charleston, North Carolina in 1978. It was originally called Molly. Shirley Knight was Dorothea and Jane Alexander. It opened at the Hudson Guild Theatre in January 1979 with Shirley Knight. It closed the following month.

Austin Pendleton is the director. He was nominated for a Tony Award for The Little Foxes (1981).

Kristine Nielsen was nominated for a Tony Award for Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (2013).

The place is St. Louis 1937.

Bodey (Kristine Nielsen) is talking to her roommate Dorothea. Dorothea is exercising in the bedroom. Bodey works in a shoe factory and Dorothea a teacher two blocks away.

Bodey is thrilled she only has to work a half day on Saturday, thanks to President Roosevelt. She is able to shop in her favorite food market. The butcher lets her touch the meat. Bodey picked up three chickens that she is cooking now. She going on a picnic with her twin brother and hopefully Dorothea will come too.

Dorothea reminds her constantly she is waiting for a call, to let her know when the phone rings. When she realizes Bodey is not wearing her hearing aid she makes her put it on. Bodey claims it hasn’t rung.

Dorothea admits she has been intimate with the principal of the school. That’s who she is hoping will call. She is smitten with him. Bodey in the meantime tells her she hopes she will marry her twin brother. He loves her.

While Dorothea is working out a co-worker from her school, Helena (Annette O’Toole) comes in. She tells Bodey she has something to tell Dorothea. Bodey won’t let her in the bedroom and Helena won’t tell her what it is. When she gets to tell her, it’s something to do with an apartment and a deposit. A first you think she is telling her about a vacant apartment. But we find out they will be roommates and she needs half of the deposit on the rent.

Bodey and Helena are putting each other down. Helena is elegant compared to Bodey factory worker image.

Back and forth comes there upstairs neighbor Miss Gluck (Dolly McKie). She only speaks German and he mother died last week. She is all alone. Bodey consoles her with coffee and doughnuts.

Things don’t go the way the women hoped they would. But they accept what it will be.

The cast is outstanding. They work well together.

The set was done by Harry Feiner was well done. So was the costumes done by Beth Goldenberg.

Review by Rozanna Radakovich.

Photos by Annazor.

To read a candid interview with the cast, scroll down to the left for photos. Click on photos for this and other shows.