The Petrified Forest

Petrified Forest, The

    Author: Robert E. Sherwood

    First Performance: 1935, New York

    Published: 1935

    Genre: Drama in 2 acts

    Setting: Diner in the Arizona desert, autumn 1934

    Cast: 18m, 3f

Jason Maple runs a service station and lunch room in the Arizona desert but would like to move to Los Angeles. His daughter Gabrielle (Gabby) dreams of going to France, her mother's home. A disillusioned writer Alan Squier comes to the diner, and Gabby and he establish a close rapport, to the dismay of the pump attendant Boze Hertzlinger. Squier is offered a lift by a rich couple, but they all soon return as hostages of Duke Mantee, a gangster on the run, who is waiting with his gang for his girl. Squier is impressed with Mantee, considering him to be ‘the last great apostle of rugged individualism’, and suggests that they...

[The entire page is 303 words long]

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