The Dazzle And, Everett Beekin : Two Plays

by Richard Greenberg

As depicted by Richard Greenberg, Langley and Homer Collyer are consumed by their obsessions—Homer reveling in telling tall tales, Langley captured by the “dazzle” of images contained within objects—in this “beautiful, disturbing, shockingly funny and profoundly humane play by a masterful dramatist” (Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times ). Everett Beekin explores the tensions between the safety of family and the yearning for a larger life through the relationships of two sets of Jewish sisters. Set in the 1940s, Act One opens with Anna and Sophie dining in their mother’s Lower East Side tenement, bickering over the presence of their sister Miri’s Gentile suitor, Jimmy. In Act Two, fifty years later, Anna’s daughters Nell and Celia meet on a California beach before the wedding of Nell’s daughter Laurel. Linking the generations is the name Everett Beekin—Jimmy’s business partner and, later, Laurel’s prospective bridegroom Everett Beekin VIII. As depicted by Richard Greenberg, Langley and Homer Collyer are consumed by their obsessions—Homer reveling in telling tall tales, Langley captured by the “dazzle” of images contained within objects—in this “beautiful, disturbing, shockingly funny and profoundly humane play by a masterful dramatist” (Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times ). Everett Beekin explores the tensions between the safety of family and the yearning for a larger life through the relationships of two sets of Jewish sisters. Set in the 1940s, Act One opens with Anna and Sophie dining in their mother’s Lower East Side tenement, bickering over the presence of their sister Miri’s Gentile suitor, Jimmy. In Act Two, fifty years later, Anna’s daughters Nell and Celia meet on a California beach before the wedding of Nell’s daughter Laurel. Linking the generations is the name Everett Beekin—Jimmy’s business partner and, later, Laurel’s prospective bridegroom Everett Beekin VIII.