[In the following essay, Williams explores the origin and development of the second and third Talley plays: Talley's Folly and A Tale Told (revised as Talley & Son.)]

In a sense, Marshall W. Mason was responsible for Talley's Folly. It was his rehearsal technique of improvisation and character exploration that led Lanford Wilson to create the tale of the wooing of young Sally Talley by her suitor, Matt Friedman.

When the work [5th of July] was in rehearsal, in order to help Helen Stenborg play her role as the widowed Sally Talley Friedman, he made up a biography for her deceased husband, Matt, “a history for her to draw on.” As he created that history, it began to grow into a play. In his mind the character of Matt took the shape of the actor Judd Hirsch, who has been a hotel clerk in Hot l Baltimore. The author told Stenborg that, if she wanted to, she could think of Hirsch as her dead husband. It was Hirsch's ashes that she carried back home to Lebanon. As Wilson remembers, “When Judd came to see 5th of July, I said, ‘You're in the box!’”

[24]

If the germ of the idea for the play came from the Circle Rep company, then the format of the play is based on a play far more familiar to the theatre audience. The atmosphere in the beginning of the play is very similar to Thornton Wilder's Our Town, which Wilson, tongue firmly planted in cheek, freely admits.

I didn't think I had been influenced by Our Town specifically. Some of Wilder's stage tricks, yes, but not really by Our Town. I was shocked when I reread the play. The Stage Manager's opening speech was completely stolen from Matt's first speech in my play Talley's Folly. I could sue. And it was totally unconscious. That's being influenced.

[25]

(If Wilson did not see the similarities between his play and Our Town, at least one critic did. Walter Kerr noted in his review in the New York Times on May 4, 1979, how Matt Friedman, “like the stage manager in ‘Our Town’ … affectionately and theatrically welcomes us to the boathouse” [26].)

Talley's Folly is a two-character play about the romance between Sally Talley and Matt Friedman. It takes place on the night of July 4, 1944 in the Talley boathouse located on the river in Lebanon, Missouri. The boathouse is a large Victorian monstrosity that the locals have dubbed “Talley's Folly.” Matt is an accountant from St. Louis who met Sally at a local hospital where she worked as a nurse's aide. Both are lonely people, considered outcasts by society: Sally because she is a thirty-one year old spinster, the black sheep of the family, and Matt because he is a Jew. During this evening, as Matt tries to woo Sally, bits and pieces of their world are revealed. Sally tells of her sheltered and stifling life in the small town, and Matt tells her how his family suffered and were driven out of Europe by World War II. In spite of the vast differences in culture and background, they discover that they may have something in common.

Wilson's style in this play is different than any of the other plays in the Talley cycle. Indeed, it is different than any other play he has written. Aside from the Our Town-quality of the play, the play is straightforward in its purpose, which is defined by Matt, who addresses the audience in much the same manner as the Stage Manager does in Wilder's play.

MATT:
(Enters in front of the stage. MATT FRIEDMAN is forty-two, dark, and rather large. Warm and unhurried, he has a definite talent for mimicry. In his voice there is still a trace of a German-Jewish accent, of which he is probably unaware. He speaks to the audience.) They tell me that we have ninety-seven minutes here tonight—without intermission. So if that means anything to anybody; if you think you'll need a drink of water or anything …
You know, a year ago I drove Sally home from a dance; and while we were standing on the porch up at the house, we looked down to the river and saw this silver flying thing rise straight up and zip off. We came running down to the river, we thought the Japanese had landed some amazing new flying machine, but all we found was the boathouse here and—uh, that was enough.
I'll just point out some of the facilities till everybody gets settled in. If everything goes well for me tonight, this should be a waltz, one-two-three, one-two-three; a no-holds-barred romantic story, and since I'm not the romantic type, I'm going to need the whole valentine here to help me: the woods, the willows, the vines, the moonlight, the band—there's a band that plays tonight, over in the park. The trees, the berries, the breeze, the sounds: water and crickets, frogs, dogs, the light, the bees, working all night.

[28, 3-4]

Although Wilson's inspiration for the play may have come from working with the actors at Circle Rep, the writing process proved difficult from Mason's point of view as a director.

MASON:
Lanford loves Talley's Folly more than I do. It's virtually a perfect play. From a director's point of view it's not as interesting as the other plays because you have only the two characters. Also, I've done the play five times, and I'm a little tired of it. With the two characters you come back night after night in a long run, and you know what Judd's doing, you know what Trish [Hawkins] is doing, and I've seen it; whereas I never got tired of watching Fifth of July. There's a whole ensemble of people on stage; somebody's always doing something a little bit differently. It's like a basketball game—they play with each other. With two characters, it's harder. Also Talley's Folly is so much a plot play, in a sense you really watch everything slide into play and (click) there it is. And when you know the end, you say, “All right, there they go again.” It slides into place: so what? When you see it the first time and it slides into place and you get it, it's an extraordinary experience, but Fifth of July is much more satisfying to me to watch.
In the first draft of Talley's Folly there was very little conflict in it. There was no presence of the offstage at all. Matt knew right from the beginning what the whole problem was and he was just trying to get Sally to confess. That wasn't very interesting. The changes were not huge changes in a way—they were subtle, small, but they made all the difference in the world. For Matt not to know, for Matt to be discovering along with the audience what Sally's problem was, left him so much more vulnerable and therefore likeable. When he knew everything, it didn't work. But we did that work in rehearsal. Actually, before we began rehearsal. Lanford gave me the first draft of the play and we read it and I said, “Sorry, there's no suspense here.” He was really angry with me. I think in terms of the writing I don't think Lanford's ever been quite as angry with me as he was over Talley's Folly because he really thought he'd written a wonderful little play, and I just said there's all kinds of things wrong with it; you've got to do this, you've got to do that, and he, very grudgingly, did them. After the fact, I'm sure Lanford looks back on this and says, “My God, of course.” It really was necessary, but I had to sort of force him to do that work because he didn't want to work on it.

[7]

Wilson apparently has come around to seeing Mason's point of view on the play. When asked about comparing the differences between the two drafts, he wrote, “It would be interesting to compare the two. A small change changed the nature of the play, the kind of play it was. Very strange” (29).

For the purpose of this study, several attempts have been made to obtain a copy of the first draft. In an undated letter received on February 6, 1988, Wilson said he thought he had a copy of it at his home in Sag Harbor, New York, and promised to look for it. It did not arrive, and a subsequent telephone conversation with Mason in April revealed that if a copy of the first draft did exist (and he was not sure that one did), it was not accessible. He also said that he doubted Wilson kept a copy of the play due to the disagreements that they had had over their differences on the play (9).

That Mason and Wilson disagreed over the first draft of Talley's Folly is not surprising, but it does indicate that they were, even when they were at odds, becoming more and more aware of each other's abilities and roles in the production of a play. They had progressed from the time when Wilson's work was met with unbridled enthusiasm by Mason and the rewriting was done in rehearsal. There was more testing, more caution. It is not a poor reflection on their relationship but rather an understanding that, perhaps, with Mason telling Wilson “You've got to change this” in a script, the work would improve before it went into rehearsal. Mason never told him specifically what to write; he understood the process of playwriting and knew that putting words in the mouths of the actors was not his job, but his encouragement and criticism provided the impetus for Wilson to make changes in the script. And Wilson also began to see that the process of staging and rehearsal is as much an effort for the director and the actors as writing is for him. He proved this to himself by watching a tech rehearsal of William G. Hoffman's As Is, directed by Mason in 1985.

WILSON:
I had a very wonderful experience when I came into a tech rehearsal of As Is and everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. The actors were … well, it was a tech rehearsal, the actors weren't acting. I hadn't seen any rehearsals. I hadn't seen anything about it, and I didn't know what it was supposed to be. But I do know Marshall's work and I had seen the play months ago in a little workshop in a very abbreviated one-act kind of form and I'd been kind of moved by it, and I knew the actors, and I knew they could do it. But what I'd seen that night was a total and complete piece of shit. I said to Marshall, “You understand, of course, I can't comment on anything that happened tonight because they didn't do it,” and he said, “Of course not.” And then he proceeded to tell them how they were … you know, with the attitude they'd gone into that evening with, that they were incapable of dealing with the material; they were not … they did not have the integrity to deal with the material if they were going to do anything like they had done that night. That was a very stiff speech. He gave them a very stiff speech, and it was all about integrity and all about where's your circumstances; all about basic acting things and where do you place yourself in life to come and do this. But really I hadn't expected very much from the production because what I had seen was so impossibly incomprehensible that … I knew it was going to be better, but. … So I went back two nights later and was a basket case. Everything that I'd ever hoped and dreamed would be there (plus about forty percent more) was all there, and I was just wiped completely out and …
MASON:
We, of course, were extremely annoyed. I almost beat you up.
WILSON:
Oh, of course.
MASON:
I was so angry with you because you … after all you'd been through that you didn't understand that we were in a tech rehearsal and where we were in the process …
WILSON:
I did understand. I said I didn't understand it all. I mean, I didn't understand that much …
MASON:
Not to the extent that it was going to be … that we were in no trouble at all and Lanford came, and so it was a performance. And of course it wasn't at all. There's just no way to explain to anybody …
WILSON:
Not even …
MASON:
Not even somebody who knows as well as he does, no matter how many times …
WILSON:
That this is not what you're gonna see.
MASON:
That's right. You say to someone, “This is just a rehearsal, this is not a performance.” And they'll always go, “Oh, yes, yes. I know that. I'm very experienced in the theatre.”
WILSON:
I swear it.
MASON:
“I can't comment …”
WILSON:
Bullshit.
MASON:
Nobody can do it.
WILSON:
“I can't comment on it cause you didn't do it.” And everyone says, “No, they didn't do it tonight so we can't comment on it,” but really they'd no concept of how good it was going to be. Or how good it already was, it's because they hadn't done it.
MASON:
I was so annoyed with you because you kept looking over at the wrong place, totally missing the wonderful moments that we had done; he was looking over somewhere else going I don't know what. You were totally looking in the wrong place a bunch of times in the production. I kept thinking, “No wonder he didn't see anything 'cause he wasn't looking where he should have been.”
WILSON:
But two nights later I looked exactly where I was supposed to. This is a very delicate sort of thing. Also, it takes that overriding vision and drive and the stick-to-itiveness. And tiny little details over and over.

[10]

It was the little details that made Talley's Folly work, first at the Circle Rep theatre in May 1979, and later, after a run in repertory in the summer of 1979, on Broadway in February 1980. The majority of the reviews from both New York productions were excellent. Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Post after the opening on May 4, 1979:

In some respects, Lanford Wilson is the luckiest playwright in the country—he has his own drama company. He was one of the founders of the company, along with Marshall W. Mason the artistic director, and others, almost exactly ten years ago, and although there are now eleven playwrights “in residence” with the Circle Rep, Wilson is the most prominent and frequently performed. … It [Talley's Folly] is perhaps the simplest, most lyrical play Wilson has so written—a funny, sweet, touching and marvelously written and contrived love poem for an apple and an orange. … Wilson's characters are totally credible, they seem to have just walked through a door from life. And as they slowly tell one another their life stories, they evoke not simply the awakening and love and respect, the confirmation of the emotional chemistry between them, but also paint a vivid picture of America. It is social history with a dramatist's insight.

Mason's direction is faultless—not a beat or inflection is missed.

[30]

Many of the reviews noted Mason's work. Douglas Watt in the Daily News said he “has directed the pair with a leaping imagination and affection realizing the author's every intention” (31). John Beaufort wrote that “Mason's insightful staging makes imaginative use of the eccentric, long-abandoned boathouse which John Lee Beatty has designed for this love duet” (32).

Reactions to the Broadway staging of the play in February 1980 were much the same. Many of the critics who reviewed the play in May 1979 returned and re-reviewed it, and again they gave it high praise. This time they paid more attention to the play itself rather than the performances of Judd Hirsch as Matt and Trish Hawkins as Sally. And at least two reviews noted that Mason's initial desire to build suspense in the play was correct, if not completely successful. Jack Kroll, writing for Newsweek, said, “Talley's Folly, for all its warmth and charm, is not free from a certain emotional patness: Matt is rather too glibly made a child of the Holocaust, and Sally's dark secret all too conveniently fits in with Matt's confession” (33). Walter Kerr said much the same in the New York Times: “The twin secrets, when they at last come out, are a bit pat; they make the pair fit just a little too well” (27). The only completely negative review of the play came from Dennis Cunningham of WCBS-TV, who called it “this silly, pointless little half-written thing” (34).

Talley's Folly represents the most concise example of the solidity of the collaboration of Wilson and Mason. The process of writing the play came from within the Circle Rep company, devoid of the jigsaw bits and pieces that Wilson fit together for Fifth of July The characters grew out of characters already established and strongly based on people he knew: Matt Friedman was written specifically for Judd Hirsch. Mason's character exploration technique led to questions, and Wilson tried to answer them. And, since the focus at Circle Rep has been, in the words of Mason, “the play always” (10), Wilson tried to write the play exactly as he saw the answers.

We've been doing these shows at Circle Rep the way we want to, and not looking at anything beyond that. I mean, I thought we were going to get creamed for Talley's Folly. I thought it was going to be the most unpopular thing I'd ever written. There was nothing compromised in the writing. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I couldn't believe it when people liked it.

[13]

Talley's Folly is Wilson's best testimony that he has progressed as a writer from his earlier works. It is a play that demonstrates he can build characters over a sustained period of time (“They tell me we have ninety-seven minutes here tonight—without intermission” [23, 3]) and maintain those characters without gimmicks, interruption or the collage technique. It requires a thorough understanding of both the needs of the actors and the audience. He achieved this progress in a deceptively simply play. But the play is anything but simplistic, and here again the parallel to Wilder's Our Town is suggested. Wilson himself noted, “let's not be blinded by the homey cute surface from the fact that ‘Our Town’ is a deadly cynical and acidly accurate play” (25). Talley's Folly is anything but cynical. In Our Town, Wilder seems to be pointing out the frailties and trivialities that measure human life. Wilson cherishes them and builds his play around them. The people of Grover's Corners seem stereotypical: no surprises, and Wilder lulls us into their world and their problems by assuming that we know nearly everything about them as the Stage Manager leads us through their lives. Wilson, on the other hand, gives us two people whose lives would not fit neatly into a stereotype and by that fact shows us that the only way for them to find happiness is with each other. Talley's Folly may resemble Our Town, but the playwrights' views of life are poles apart.

In Talley's Folly, Wilson has achieved his most concise writing to this point. His ability to focus on character and relationship in a very limited situation is a marked contrast to his earlier works such as The Rimers of Eldritch or even The Hot l Baltimore. Here is the blending of light romance and the creation of very real characters.

The play is not all light romance. Wilson does have some sober touches. That Matt Friedman should try to court Sally after being escorted from the porch by Sally's brother with a shotgun may add some humor to the play, but he is all too aware of the similarity of this action to his own family's treatment in Europe. Sally's love for Matt is not only based on the rebellion she feels against her family, but also on her respect for this man whom she believes is risking his life to see her, even if she considers herself damaged and unworthy of his attention. And so, while the romance is sweet between these two outcasts, there is a bitter flavor that goes along with it. There is no surprise in the outcome of the play; Matt tells the audience in the opening of the play that this is a romance, and those familiar with Fifth of July know that this is a love that will last a lifetime.

While Wilson and Mason may have disagreed about the first draft, the results certainly show that they worked out their differences. Not only was the play satisfactory to audiences and critics, it won the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for drama. That in itself indicates most effectively that Wilson and Mason's collaboration had reached a point where they were able to work together in the strongest possible way: each depending on the other and learning what was needed to achieve success. The play has also passed Wilson's own acid test: he has no plans to rewrite it as he did with Fifth of July. In a pre-Broadway opening interview, he said, “this is the best I'll ever be able to write it” (14).

After the success of Talley's Folly, Wilson began to explore the Talley family in more detail. His next play, A Tale Told, took another step back in the family's history. It proved to be the most complex of the three Talley plays, and perhaps the least successful. The next chapter explores its origins and evolution to Talley & Son.

When Talley's Folly opened on Broadway, Mel Gussow, in his article for the May 1980 edition of Horizon magazine, noted that the Talley family history was not completed. Wilson intended to write more about this collection of characters.

Three more plays taking place in and around the Talley house are expected from the prolific author. One, The War in Lebanon, will deal with what was happening in the main house while Matt was courting Sally. Another will offer a portrait of Whistler Talley, the dreamer who designed the gewgawed curio of a boathouse … and the final play will take place around 1865, at the time of the Civil War, when the house was built. The resulting quintet should offer a comprehensive portrait of American provincial life.

[24]

By August of 1985, Wilson had written the third of the Talley plays, Talley & Son. It was in production in Saratoga Springs, New York, when the author of this study was invited by Wilson and Mason to see the show and afterwards meet with them for an interview. I was invited to a post-show reception and was introduced to the cast of the play. After the reception, Mason and Wilson took me to an apartment (rented as housing for company members) where the interview was conducted. It was well after midnight by the time the interview began in one of the bedrooms in the apartment. Mason sat at the study desk. Wilson, with a bit of a cold and still recovering from an attack of sciatica in March, reclined on the bed. In spite of the late hour, both men were animated during the conversation; they seemed to enjoy recalling their work together.

Wilson's plays about the Talley family were written in reverse order from their fictional chronology; that is, the first play written, 5th of July, is set in the most recent time, 1977. Then, with each succeeding play, Wilson worked backwards in time: Talley's Folly and Talley & Son are set in 1944. Wilson was asked how he envisioned that the story of the family might continue. The recollections he had about the origins of the story tell not only about the emergence of the Talley plays, but also reveal a great deal about how Wilson approaches writing a play. He looks at the overall scope of what he hopes to say in the play—for example, the affect of war on American society—and then brings it down to the personal level of dealing with each member of the Talley family.

Q:
When you started working on this trilogy, did you begin with a central idea of a theme and develop it that way, or did you just let them evolve from 5th [Fifth of July] to Talley's Folly to Talley & Son?
WILSON:
5th was first and doing research for 5th, I realized that there was a possibility of doing several of these plays, and thinking about …
MASON:
Actually, very early on, I think certainly by the time of Talley's Folly … I'm thinking even that was, a matter of fact, that was before you wrote Talley's Folly, maybe the first announcement of Talley's Folly, it was called The War in Lebanon, wasn't it?
Q:
That's right, I was going to ask you. …
MASON:
Was it Talley's Folly or A Tale Told? In any case, there was an early idea of writing a series of plays about how the war affected …
WILSON:
The war affected small …
MASON:
The American society. Loss of values and ideals.
Q:
And it's never made clear really which war.
WILSON:
Oh, through each one.
MASON:
Through each one.
WILSON:
Kept changing, kept changing.
Q:
Because I know that … I can't remember; what interview was that in Horizon, was that Mel Gussow, in Horizon?
WILSON:
Horizon, yes.
Q:
You talked about it with him just after Talley's Folly had opened and you're saying there was another play.
WILSON:
First it was called … was that 5th of July that was called Regarding the Bosom of Abraham?
MASON:
No, that was this play.
WILSON:
That was this play. First it was called Regarding the Bosom of Abraham, and then it was called A Tale Told, and now finally I think we've got it with Talley & Son. 'Course, finally we're talking about generations, and we're talking about father and son. It turns out to be a father and son play. And a father and son, and a father and son, and a father and son, and father and son. It goes way. … And it becomes, in effect, a father and son between the father in this play and his son Kenny in the next play as well. You can see the relationship. You can see it just strikes lightning from Buddy to Kenny 'cause they're about the same age. And it just goes zing-a zang-a, zing-a zang-a between those two, but God, are they opposites.
Q:
Are you done with the Talleys, do you think?
WILSON:
No, working on this has made me very curious about … There's a play that's got Whistler and Nora, the black cook, and …
MASON:
Carl Saper, the guy who cut down the walnut trees.
Q:
You could go back to the Civil War.
WILSON:
We were going to go back to the Civil War. But that's a whole different play.
MASON:
This play's [the unwritten one] the First World War. Carl Saper and Stewart, the son that died. The first son who died, and probably Old Man Talley will be in that as a fifty year old man. Or forty.
Q:
You're going to make the Star Wars thing seem like …
WILSON:
Oh, the ultimate comment was I went out the other day and heard … this is the first comment, I went out to hear what people were talking about and the woman was explaining to her company, “No, no, No; I understand there's three of them. It's a mini-series.”
[Laughter.]
WILSON:
I turned right around and went back in and went, “Oh my God, this trilogy is just degenerated into a mini-series,” and I went right back in and right back into the dressing room and didn't listen to another word.
MASON:
There are probably two more. Probably Timmy …
WILSON:
We keep talking about two more.
Q:
Nothing beyond Fifth of July?
WILSON:
Oh, no, no, no; I'm not sure of that, because I can see …
MASON:
Get another war going …
WILSON:
Oh, God, let's hope not. But, I can see Shirley dictating the whole five plays. I can see Shirley with possibly Jed in, say, 1995. I can see them talking. But it's very over tea. It's very Shirley rattling on over tea. Shirley is a writer.
MASON:
An epilogue, I think.
WILSON:
Yeah. Shirley is a writer, and she's rattling on over tea. I can see that very much. And Jed has left the gardens to the city.
Q:
And the title of the play is What Happened After.
WILSON:
Well, I don't know what it is. I can see the gardens left to the city, which is exactly what should happen to them. He rebuilt them and got the agricultural students involved in keeping them up and left it to the school and the city. I can see that as quite the way it should be. Quite the way the gardens should end up, and the Talley estate becomes a public park. I can quite see that.
MASON:
It would be very nice.
WILSON:
And Shirley lives there, maybe in the garage. In an apartment that she's made in the garage and writes. And yells at the people who come and peek in the windows when they're looking at the garden.
WILSON:
Aged writer. A crabbed sort of writer. A monologue for Clara. …
[MASON laughs.]

[10]

Talley & Son emerged from the same type of investigation of character that had initially created Talley's Folly. Wilson's interest in the rest of the clan may yet lead to the other plays, and where they will lead is anyone's guess. However, the production history of this story of the Talley family reveals a good deal about Wilson's efforts to improve his work and, with the help of Mason, clarify the characters he has created.

Talley & Son was first produced as A Tale Told in 1981 at the Circle Repertory Theatre (35). In the winter of 1985 Wilson began rewriting the play in preparation for a production at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York. By the time it was ready to open, the title had been changed to Talley & Son (36). The play was in performance at SPAC from August 7 through 24 of 1985, and then moved to the Circle Rep Theatre in New York, where it opened on October 22 and ran in repertory with Tomorrow's Monday by Paul Osborn.

The Talleys are a rich family who got that way through sharp business practices and parsimony. Calvin Talley, who is the son of the man who built the house and boathouse, is in his nineties and at death's door as the family gathers on July 4, 1944 to celebrate the holiday and privately prepare for the elder Mr. Talley's funeral. His son Eldon (inexplicably called “Joe” on one page of the first draft) is in charge of the family garment business and has received a takeover offer from a conglomerate in Louisiana. He has three children: Sally; Kenneth, nicknamed Buddy, who is serving in the Army in Europe and is home on emergency leave (and is also the father of Ken and June in Fifth of July); and Timmy, who is in the Marines. His partner, Harley Campbell (whose funeral Sally attends in Act II of Fifth of July) is opposed to the offer. Old Mr. Talley doesn't trust a conglomerate, but he knows a fortune when he smells it and maneuvers his son into the sale of the business. During the evening the family receives the news that Timmy was killed in action on the Pacific island of Saipan. In the midst of dealing with this tragedy, Viola Platt, the family's washerwoman, makes it clear to Eldon that she expects him to “do what's right” for her daughter, Eldon's illegitimate child. At the same time, Sally is down at the boathouse being courted by Matt Friedman (detailed in Talley's Folly). The other characters in the play include Buddy's wife Olive, Eldon's wife Netta, and his sister Lottie, who is dying from cancer. She represents the good side of the family: she encourages Sally to marry Matt, she stands up to her father (Wilson said that one of the reasons he included Lottie was based on his desire to have a woman walk across the stage and say “Oh, kiss my ass” [37]), and she shares the stage with Timmy at the end of the play.

A draft of the script of A Tale Told, made available by Mason, reveals some interesting information about Wilson's writing habits. Notes on the draft indicate that Wilson wrote the play in Sag Harbor on Long Island, where he has a house, and New York City. The script has the date March 16, 1981 written on the last page and the script is typed on two different typewriters: the first forty-nine pages appear to have been written on an older machine using a rather faded ink ribbon, and the remainder written on a newer machine (probably the IBM Selectric that Wilson has in his office at the Circle Rep) with a carbon ribbon.

Wilson's writing format uses a technique that has become traditional among many playwrights. The character's name is centered over his line, and stage directions are indented and contained in parentheses. A typical section looks like this:

TALLEY:
Thank you, very much. Mr. Young, I'm sure you'll make your point.
(To VIOLA)
Thank you very much.
LOTTIE:
That means he's finished with you, honey.
VIOLA:
Is that what that means? I'm sorry, I can't help you; I don't know nothing about it.
(SHE exits)

[38, 11-20]

Wilson's use of stage direction is very sparse. Compared to published versions of his other works, this draft has nothing more than entrances, exits, and indicators to whom someone is speaking or where (from offstage, for example). This draft supports the idea that published versions of his plays are based on Wilson's own addition of directions once the play has been staged by Mason.

WILSON:
I haven't written a stage direction in I-don't-know-how-long, because I've found that Marshall does better stage directions than I do. When a play is published, I find it very difficult to go back and add stage directions that will help someone read the script.
MASON:
But Lance is very fair about it. When he does go back and write those directions, he really limits it. He puts down things that are germane to the play but doesn't rip off the director's work. There are some writers, on the other hand, who mark down every cross and every piece of business. I recently talked to a young director who was about to do a project in some college somewhere of a play I had directed. I told him, “The first thing you must do is cross out all the stage directions.” In that case, the playwright had written down everything I had told the actors. Every piece of business had been written down and put into the published script. I felt that if that young director were to have followed them, he would have been very limited by them. All those directions are really limiting on the imaginations of the other artists who do subsequent productions of the play.
WILSON:
Of course, if it's germane to the action of the play—like “He falls dead”—you put it in. But I'll only put in an interpretive stage direction like “Smiling”; to aid the actor if the line it refers to could be interpreted in two different ways; if the line sounds harsh and I really mean it ironically, for instance. I only put in stage directions where it's absolutely necessary to make something clear.

[6]

When A Tale Told opened at the Circle Rep on June 11, 1981, it was given very mixed reviews. Frank Rich in the New York Times wrote,

While Lanford Wilson is one of our theater's very best writers, his new play, which opened at the Circle Repertory Company last night, seems written out of obligation rather than inspiration. No, his perfect ear for American speech hasn't failed him, and neither has his crack director, Marshall W. Mason. But this time Mr. Wilson's lush language and Mr. Mason's flawless staging have been applied to a theatrical vacuum.

[39]

Several reviews compared the play with The Little Foxes, by Lillian Hellman. One called it a weak melodrama, chiding the play for not playing the complexities of the household to the hilt (40). John Beaufort of the Christian Science Monitor, however, took the comparison to Wilson's credit and complimented him for making the play work in that fashion (41).

Overall, the reaction to the play was either very positive (Clive Barnes of the New York Post said “It may very well be the author's best play to date” [42]) or very negative (Douglas Watt concluded his review by saying, “Wilson has been quoted as saying that although he'll next turn to other subjects, he's by no means finished with the Talleys; but I have the feeling I am” [40].)

The events of the evening of July 4, 1944 focus on establishing the relationships in the family. Like a Chekov play, Wilson is interested in watching the people as well as telling the story. In rewriting A Tale Told into Talley & Son, Wilson used many of the devices he had learned in rewriting Fifth of July. Shifting parts of scenes and changing dialogue brought the play into clearer focus. For example, in A Tale Told, the ghost of Tim Talley, killed in action in World War II, inhabits the play, yet he does not speak during the first act. Then, in Act II (the announcement of his death ends Act I), he has a series of monologues that detail his death and his view of war and his family. In Talley & Son, however, he appears in Act I as a narrator, almost as Matt Friedman does in Talley's Folly. His role in the play is clarified, and his purpose is more lighthearted; instead of wandering through like the ghost of Hamlet's father, he escorts the audience like a tour guide through moments of the play. In Talley & Son, we are also introduced to Sally in the opening lines; she is leaving the house to go meet Matt Friedman down at the boathouse (which is Talley's Folly). In A Tale Told, Sally makes a brief appearance at the end of the play. As in Fifth of July, Wilson's reworking did not change the overall focus of the play. The changes made in the play from 1981 to 1985 sharpen the focus on the characters.

While in performance at Saratoga, Talley & Son, in true Mason and Wilson fashion, underwent revision as it progressed. By the time it reached the Circle Rep at New York, some changes had been made again from the production at Saratoga. These included reworking Timmy's opening monologue and the restructuring of the scene at the end of the play where Timmy and Lottie are alone on the stage. Robert Macnaughton, who played the role of Timmy in Saratoga and New York, described the changes and the process.

Q:
When we last talked, you had just finished two weeks' run of the show up in Saratoga, and I saw it before Lanford changed the ending. …
MACNAUGHTON:
He'd changed it several times.
Q:
Am I wrong in thinking that your opening monologue is …
MACNAUGHTON:
Shorter, considerably shorter.
Q:
Tell me the process of going through the rewrites.
MACNAUGHTON:
What they did was … they'd call a rehearsal for that afternoon before, before the performance, and they said, “Well, we did a little bit with the dialogue in the end,” or “we changed a little bit,” and it wasn't bad at all. It was really easy, in fact. And also because they didn't much, except for that new speech was a little … I had to work on that a lot … in the end, for example, they just shifted around the lines. They're basically the same lines. And then there's one new line added.
Q:
How was that done? Was that Marshall coming in and saying “We've got some new work,” or was it Lanford coming in and saying, “We've worked together …”
MACNAUGHTON:
They would both do it. Marshall came up one time with something that he thought Lanford would approve of. He sort of restaged it and said because “we discussed this,” but they hadn't really written any lines, so Marshall came up with some lines that he thought that Lanford would like, and we did them for one performance, and then Lanford said, “that's good, I like the intent of that line, but here's …” and he would re-write the line. For example, the last line of the play now …
Q:
Is what?
MACNAUGHTON:
“Boy.” And then Joyce Reehling Christopher, who's playing Lottie, says, “What?” and I say, “America won the war today. We all go off. By the time they get back, the country's changed so much I don't imagine they'll recognize it.” It's the last line. And what Marshall suggested, you know; I guess he discussed it with Lanford, but they hadn't really come up with any lines. What Marshall wanted was, “Boy, by the time the other guys get back, the country's changed so much I don't think they'll recognize it.” And then Lanford just came up with the more tailored version of it. … It went through six or seven different changes. And we'd try 'em out before an audience and stuff and get comments from people, and they'd talk to people. We tried the last line in the play being, for a while, being, “Good night, Mr. Talley.” Saratoga's a perfect opportunity to do that. We had … y'know, without the pressure of trying to do it opening night or something in New York. They tried that out, the last line being “Good night, Mr. Talley”; they tried me coming to the window and her [Lottie] saying, “Oh, it's wonderful, it's wonderful,” and then me just going off and putting on my helmet and saying, “America won the Second World War today,” echoing the first line, and then just staying there. They finally came up with the ending. Also what's changed about it, which is really nice for me, that he actually exits now, so you get the sense, I feel, that he's done what he's come here for, so he's finished and he's done what he needed to do, and now he's going to go off.

[43]

Although it is not recorded in detail as to how many changes Wilson and Mason made in the final scene of the play during rehearsal, the difference between the two versions of the play shows a great deal of variation in tone and character study. In A Tale Told, Wilson ends the play with Sally returning from the boathouse, ready to run off the St. Louis with Matt Friedman. Only her aunt Lottie sees her and speaks with her. She does not get a chance to confront her father or anyone else in the family (nor is she aware of Timmy's death). The end of A Tale Told went as follows:

NETTA:
Lottie, don't stay up all night, now, you try to get some sleep.
(SHE is by the window, takes down flag with two stars)
I don't want this display in the window anymore. I don't want that. And you take down the one that's in the window at the factory. I'm going to sleep in Tim's room tonight. Day after tomorrow I'll move my things in there. I'm not getting out of bed tomorrow. I don't want anyone mooning over me; I just want you to know I'm not coming downstairs. And you tell Buddy I'm not going to the train to see him off, and I'm not writing any more V-mail letters to him in Belgium or France or wherever they send him. When he comes home, fine, but until he comes home I consider that he's gone, too. I'm not going to sit home and hope he'll be back.
(Pause)
And I want you to lock up the house tonight.
ELDON:
(Finding his voice)
Now, no need for that … we've always—
NETTA:
(Still level)
I want the house locked tonight. You shut these windows and you find the keys where ever they are and you lock the house. Now you come up when you're ready, I'm going to bed.
(SHE goes upstairs)
ELDON:
If I lock the doors, I'd lock Sally out.
LOTTIE:
I'll let her in.
(ELDON locks the windows by LOTTIE; he would like to say something, but can find nothing to say. HE takes a large ring of keys, finds one, goes to the French windows, locks them and goes out the door toward the kitchen. SALLY sneaks down the stairs as HE comes back through the house. HE has been shutting off lights as he goes)
LOTTIE:
(Sotto voce to SALLY)
Wait!
(SALLY darts back up stairs. To ELDON)
Don't forget the windows in the dining room.
ELDON:
(Mumbled)
What a bother.
(HE goes. SALLY sneaks down to the hall)
LOTTIE:
You call me here tomorrow and I want to hear the operator say I got a collect call for Charlotte Talley from Sally Friedman.
SALLY:
Goodbye.
(SHE exits. ELDON comes into the hall and locks the front door with a loud click)
ELDON:
You'll let Sally in?
LOTTIE:
I'll be here.
ELDON:
I'm going up then.
(HE goes up the stairs; the lights from the upstairs hall goes out. TIM has entered the room. A long pause)
LOTTIE:
(To TIM)
It's embarrassing how they've had to let the place go, isn't it? The house hasn't been painted in four years.
TIME [sic]:
Yeah, it's beginning to show it. The yard's pretty bad.
LOTTIE:
They had it cleared out a couple of times. Hoboes came looking for a handout, Eldon told them if they'd clear out the garden they could have supper. Then the last two years, everybody's got a job somewhere. There's no one left to handle it. They just mow the lawn and let the rest of it go. It's no good to anybody, anyway.
TIM:
It's a nice old house.
(Looks at LOTTIE who is holding her breath)
You in pain?
LOTTIE:
(In pain)
No, no, I got a phone call coming tomorrow, I got to be in good shape for that. A person could get from day to day for thirty years looking forward to a phone call.
(The pain goes away, enormous sigh)
Oh, lord.
(Beat)
Oh, wonderful.
(Beat)
Wonderful, wonderful.
CURTAIN

[38, II:32-34]

As Macnaughton said, Wilson and Mason wanted to give the audience a feeling of completion at the end of the play and add a sense of continuation for Eldon. The rewrites made during the production at Saratoga and in New York allowed Eldon to return to the stage to see Sally as she left the house and for him to come to terms with her elopement. She also makes it clear to him that she understands what he is going through in assuming the role of patriarch of the family. The story has a more complete ending. The published version of Talley & Son ends this way:

NETTIE:
Lottie, don't stay up all night now, you try to get some sleep. (She is by the window, takes down the flag with two stars) I don't want this display in the window anymore. I don't want that. And you take down the one that's in the window at the factory, and the one at the bank. I'm going to sleep in Tim's room tonight. Day after tomorrow I'll move my things in there. I'm not getting out of bed tomorrow. I don't want anyone mooning over me; I just want you to know I'm not coming downstairs.
ELDON:
There'll be people coming tomorrow to pay their respects—
NETTA:
I'm not coming downstairs tomorrow. And you tell Buddy that I'm not going to the train to see him off, and I'm not writing any more V-mail letters to him in Belgium or France or Italy or wherever they send him. When he comes home, fine, but until he comes home I consider that he's gone, too. I'm not going to sit home and hope he'll be back. (Pause) And I want you to lock up the house tonight.
ELDON:
(Finding his voice) Now, no need for that …
NETTA:
(Still level) I want the house locked tonight.
ELDON:
There's never been a door locked in this town.
NETTA:
You shut those windows and you find the keys, wherever they are, and you lock the house. Now I'm going to bed. (She goes upstairs)
ELDON:
If I lock the door, I'll lock Sally out.
LOTTIE:
I'll be here. (ELDON would like to say something, but can find nothing to say. He exits to the office as SALLY starts to sneak down the stairs. To SALLY) Wait! (SALLY goes back up the stairs. ELDON reenters. He goes to the French windows and locks them. He and LOTTIE have been shutting off lights as he goes) Don't forget the windows in the dining room.
ELDON:
(Mumbling): What a bother. (He goes)
LOTTIE:
(Calling up the stairs): Sally!
(SALLY sneaks down the hall)
SALLY:
We'll have you up to visit us in St. Louis soon as we can.
LOTTIE:
No, don't worry about me …
SALLY:
And we'll be down for a visit next spring. I don't know how the family will like that.
LOTTIE:
They'll just have to lump it.
(ELDON reenters and stops when he sees SALLY and LOTTIE. SALLY turns to him)
SALLY:
I'm going to St. Louis tonight.
ELDON:
You going to live with that man?
SALLY:
I'm going to marry Matt Friedman, yes.
ELDON:
It's not like you to run away without telling the family off.
LOTTIE:
That was my idea.
ELDON:
You sure you're doing the right thing?
SALLY:
Oh, I'm sure.
ELDON:
Sometimes you think you're doing the right thing but it doesn't work out that way.
SALLY:
It'll work out.
ELDON:
I hope so, Sally.
(They embrace)
LOTTIE:
Sally. You call me tomorrow and I want to hear that operator say I have a collect call for Charlotte Talley from Sally Friedman.
SALLY:
Goodbye. (She exits)
ELDON:
She'll call you tomorrow?
LOTTIE:
Yes.
ELDON:
Someone has to tell her about her brother.
LOTTIE:
I'll do that. (She takes the keys)
ELDON:
Well … Good night, Lottie.
LOTTIE:
Good night, Mr. Talley. (ELDON stands for a moment, then exits. Pause. LOTTIE and TIMMY look out the window) Dad's right about one thing; everything's gone to the dogs. The house has needed painting for four years.
TIMMY:
Yeah, it's beginning to show it. The garden's pretty bad.
LOTTIE:
There's no one now to take care of it. (She unlocks the French windows)
TIMMY:
It's a nice old house. It's a lot smaller than I remember.
LOTTIE:
(Opens the French windows—a distant band is playing) The band's playing down across the river. Oh, that's wonderful. (A deep breath) Oh, that's wonderful. What is it, honey?
TIMMY:
America won the war today. We all go off; by the time they get back, the country's changed so much I don't imagine they'll recognize it.
LOTTIE:
I know.
(TIMMY walks outside and off. LOTTIE stands alone at the windows, listening to the distant band. The music continues as the light fades)
Curtain

[35, 112-115]

Both Wilson and Mason agreed that the changes in the script were necessary to improve the play. One element that was changed was the role of Timmy as narrator instead of as a presence. In the interview at Saratoga, Wilson and Mason discussed the use of such devices as a narrator like Timmy in Talley & Son or Matt in Talley's Folly. It is a technique that Wilson used before in his play, Lemon Sky. The use of a narrator underscores the belief of Wilson and Mason that whatever method can honestly convey a part of the play to the audience is a legitimate approach.

Q:
What problem does the narrator solve? Or create?
WILSON:
I don't know if it solves them. I just … way back when, when I first understood what theatre was, I was very excited about all the possibilities of theatre and I have never ever been absolutely as straightforward realistic as I've been accused of being and … but I've been accused of being incredibly straightforward realistic. I don't mind; that's fine. I don't particularly hate realistic theatre; I think it's absolutely great … or whatever that stuff that Chekov and Ibsen do; it doesn't bother me a bit. But anyway, I like … I started liking the idea of admitting that there's an audience there, and I had to turn off of that. …
MASON:
You were deeply impressed with, I remember, with The Hostage. … Your idea of theatre was founded a lot on The Hostage.
WILSON:
On The Hostage and The Three-Ring Circus.
MASON:
And before that, the magic of Death of a Salesman.
WILSON:
Death of a Salesman. I was very impressed with Next Time I'll Sing to You when they spoke right to the audience. All of the monologues from Balm in Gilead come right from Next Time I'll Sing to You, all those shaggy dog stories. I was so impressed with that. I just liked that, and so using theatre, and I don't use it as much as I could, God knows, but I like the idea of all of those various things you can do with it; that you can have someone talking in a scene and turn out and talk to the audience. It's in every toothpaste commercial you see and we don't think of it as unusual in the least. “Oh, Daddy! I really got a good checkup! And you can too if you just. …” We don't think of it. “I use Colgate and you should too.”
MASON:
Back in the fifties, that radical George Burns and Gracie Allen talked to the camera and turned on his television set to watch what was going on.
WILSON:
Exactly.
MASON:
Explain the stylistic motive in that. People didn't have any trouble with it at all. Also, the idea of the narrator really goes back all the way to the Greek chorus.
WILSON:
Of course.
MASON:
The narrator has been with us since drama was invented.
WILSON:
And I like it. I like it. I think it's terrific. And I think it. …
MASON:
Need a guide sometimes to help you through …
WILSON:
Every once in a while.
MASON:
A priest; a chief priest to help you through the experience.
Q:
Who is the narrator, then? Who does he become? Can he really become part, a complete part of the play?
MASON:
The narrator is the one, as the name implies, is the one who tells you what the story is about. The narrative.
Q:
Can he ever divorce himself from being narrator and become part of the action?
WILSON:
Oh, he does in Lemon Sky, I think. Very strongly. He might very well; it's a little difficult in this play, Talley & Son tonight, because he's a ghost as well as narrator, but he certainly … oh, yeah, he often can. Awfully well integrated in …
MASON:
Balm in Gilead.
WILSON:
Yeah, Balm in Gilead.
MASON:
Don't people talk to the audience and …
WILSON:
And then be a part of the action, right. In Tennessee's Glass Menagerie primary scenes turn out as narration. I like things where … in Balm in Gilead, where they're … where anyone in the play can suddenly become a narrator and say, “What is really happening here is …” and there are four different ones that do that.
MASON:
Same thing in … to a certain extent in Serenading Louie.
WILSON:
In the first version of that where everyone eventually turned out and said things to the audience. I've cut those out now because I thought … I think it was a theatrical device that I was in love with at the time because I wanted to admit frankly that these people were on stage and yet I didn't really understand at the time the power of the illusion that they were not on stage, that they were in their room, and the jarring nature of it I thought was exciting and I don't find it so exciting anymore.
MASON:
The audiences didn't find it …
WILSON:
The audiences didn't, not in that play. Not in that play they don't.
Q:
Could one say that the dramatist is, in a sense, copping out of developing the character fully and instead of explaining him through narration, letting him …
WILSON:
Now that's a criticism that I don't think is true. That was a criticism of Serenading Louie, and all I did was have him say the same lines to the people on stage instead of, “Now, a very interesting thing.” Can he cop out? No. It may be … I just said no, and now I'm saying yes. It was very different. In Serenading Louie I said “and she says that,” I said, “Just erase ‘to the audience’ and when she had to say “I don't really know if I loved him then, but I loved him now,” in front of the other three people, and not to the audience at all but to the other three people, she had to suddenly take responsibility for saying that, which she did not have to do before. But worse, the other three people had to take responsibility for hearing it. What that did to Lindsay Crouse was astonishing. What that did to, rather, Dianne Wiest was astonishing when I took that stage direction away. It was like she was fuckin' devastated, and it changed her whole character. So it's not copping out. It's just a very different thing. And suddenly the responsibility is different. The moment, the burden is on the characters, but I don't think that moment really said anything more. It's very different, but I don't think it said anything more to the audience than it did after I made it part of the scene.
Q:
Then it doesn't become a narration, it becomes more of an aside.
WILSON:
Well, that wasn't an aside. All of those things are valuable.
MASON:
Look at Sam Shepard. Sam uses all these devices incessantly. And so did Wycherly and so did Sheridan. Shakespeare. Soliloquies in Shakespeare; what are they? If they're not. …
WILSON:
They're to us.
Q:
It can be very important. The end of Glass Menagerie … “I didn't go to the moon …” Powerful stuff.
WILSON:
And no one says, “Oh, well, he's copping out because he's talking to us.” No way. No way, they don't think that.
MASON:
You're adding perspective. That's often what a narrator is able to do is to say, as Brecht pointed out so vividly with his theories of dramatic art. You want to keep the audience aware that the experience is more than just an illusion, because illusions are like dreams.
WILSON:
Reliving something.
MASON:
“Oh, God, I had this dream;” but what does it mean? and what's it about? And how does it apply to my life. Those things you have to have some guidance for or some signposts.
WILSON:
Something to take you out for a moment. I tried doing that in Louie [Serenading Louie], but it just didn't work because it was too … I was too …
MASON:
But it worked very well … I mean, it works.
WILSON:
Works much better in this [Talley & Son].
MASON:
This play, you can imagine. Timmy doesn't need to be in this play. Cut him right out …
WILSON:
Yeah, cut him out.
MASON:
But, would you diminish the play? Significantly.
WILSON:
You bet.
WILSON:
It makes that whole perspective that he brings to it is really important, and …
MASON:
We couldn't see what we were going through during the Second World War and I'm not sure that if we just dramatized the Second World War now in a family drama that it'd be like …
WILSON:
This play would be a lot uglier without Timmy in it, and it's not because he softens it; it's because of the perspective he gives on it.
MASON:
So that you can forget …
WILSON:
You understand the stress. You understand the distance. These people were going through hell. And he's just talking about his own private thing, but it distances you in a way from the … and where I think you see Olive more clearly and some of the other characters more clearly. Doesn't say a word about them, hardly, but he gives you a perspective, I would hope.

[10]

It is not uncommon for Wilson to use an individual character such as Timmy to personify an attitude such as the Second World War. He is not, on the surface, using him like a Greek choral figure—a representation of an entire army, for example—but he does make him representative of something larger. This is reminiscent of Wilson's earlier work such as The Rimers of Eldritch, where individual characters portrayed the views of the whole town. Therefore, Timmy's role in the play becomes more important as it becomes more personalized, and the difference between the characters in A Tale Told and Talley & Son marks a noticeable change in the scripts. In the beginning of A Tale Told, Timmy is introduced in this fashion:

The time is around sunset, July 4th, 1944.
The living room is empty.
VIOLA:
(Off. Calling loudly)
Mr. Eldon? Anybody home? Mrs. Talley? Yo-hoo. Anybody to home?
OLIVE:
(Off, upstairs, stage whisper; overlapping)
Mrs. Platt. Hush up. Oh, my goodness.
VIOLA:
(Continuing)
Mr. Eldon? Anybody to home here? Miss Talley.
OLIVE:
(Continuing)
Oh, good lord, would somebody shut that woman up.
(As NETTA appears from the back hall)
Mother, I just got Junnie to sleep. She's gonna wake her right up.
(TIMMY walks from somewhere into the middle of the room. He is wearing clean fatigues. He looks about the room, wandering from one side to the other)

[38, 1]

Talley & Son begins quite differently. Instead of benignly passing through the beginning of the play, Timmy draws the attention of the audience right away by making a very strong opening statement. He is not portrayed as some ethereal vision, but is shown in full stage light. It is not until the end of his opening speech that the audience is made aware of the fact that he might be a ghost.

The time is sunset, July 4, 1944.
TIMMY TALLEY stands near the fireplace. He speaks to the audience.
TIMMY:
America won the Second World War today. It'll be August next year before anybody knows it, but we took Saipan, and from Saipan we'll take its little cousin Tinian, and from Tinian a B-29 can finally take off for Japan and get back again, and then the war's over. I'm a little early here. This is the Fourth of July; I'm due here on the sixth, for Granddad's funeral. I got my pass in my pocket. And while I'm here we're gonna have this big powwow about the family business. See, Harley Campbell and Dad own this garment factory, Talley & Son. Now some big company's wantin' to buy us out. Dad wrote me I'd better get my butt back here quick before Harley sold off everything but my stamp collection. (ELDON comes in) Hey, Dad, that was one hell of a fire-and-brimstone letter. Hey could you look at me for a change? What you don't know—I got a letter from you and one from Harley and one from Mom. Dad? (ELDON goes into the office. TIMMY looks back to the audience) Last thing I knew I was bumping along on a stretcher, some guy's hand over my eyes. I was yelling, “I gotta see Dad, man, get me up. Everything going all right, I'm home for the sixth.” I think everything didn't go all right.
(SALLY runs down the stairs)
LOTTIE:
Sally. Sally. I thought you locked yourself in your room.
SALLY:
Oh, I am so mad, I really am.
TIMMY:
That's my sister.
LOTTIE:
Sally, Buddy and Olive don't have the sense. …
SALLY:
Oh, I am very angry with both of them, and Mother, too.
LOTTIE:
Mr. Friedman was as polite and gentlemanly as anyone could ask.
SALLY:
Most of all I am angry with Matt Friedman.
LOTTIE:
It wasn't Matt …
SALLY:
How dare he get himself into a fight with my brother.
LOTTIE:
Matt wasn't fighting; he was going to sit on the porch and wait for you. Buddy chased him off with a shotgun.
SALLY:
Oh, Lord.
LOTTIE:
I hit Buddy with a broom, and I'm glad.
SALLY:
Why did Matt come down here in the first place? He knows how we feel about him. Oh!
LOTTIE:
He said he wanted to talk to your father.
SALLY:
Aunt Lottie, I wish you would get all that romantic twaddle out of your mind.
LOTTIE:
Well …
SALLY:
If there was a place to move to, I'd move there tonight.
LOTTIE:
I know, darling.
OLIVE:
(Coming down the stairs): Sally, I just got June to sleep. You're going to wake her right up.
SALLY:
Well, I wouldn't want to do that.
LOTTIE:
Where are you going, Sally?
SALLY:
Out. Out. I'm going out.
LOTTIE:
Sally, stay here and talk to me.
SALLY:
I am very angry with this entire household. (She slams out the door)
LOTTIE:
(At the door) Sally!
TIMMY:
(To audience) I think my sister's very angry with the entire household.
LOTTIE:
(Calling) Sally, come back up here.
OLIVE:
Aunt Lottie, you might have some consideration. You're going to wake June right up.
LOTTIE:
I'm not speaking to you, Olive. (She storms off outside, leaving TIMMY alone in the parlor)
TIMMY:
Boy, this family. This house. This room. This is where we always liked to come and play 'cause we weren't allowed to. We'd lay around on the rug playing Monopoly, but Sally'd always lost interest and I'd just lose—Buddy'd beat up on Sally and Sally's old boyfriend Harley'd beat up on me 'cause I was the youngest. About the only thing we did together was save up our dimes and sneak down to the Lyric Theater to see a picture show, 'cause we weren't allowed to do that either. If the family ever went to the movies, they could watch us win the war next week on the Movietone Newsreel. They could see me die.
VIOLA:
(Off, calling loudly) Mr. Eldon? Anybody at home? Mrs. Talley?
OLIVE:
(Upstairs, whispering; overlapping): Viola, hush up. Oh, my goodness.
VIOLA:
(Continuing): Mr. Eldon?
TIMMY:
Is anybody going to get the door?
VIOLA:
Anybody to home here? Miss Charlotte?
OLIVE:
(Continuing) Oh, good Lord, would somebody shut that woman up. (NETTA appears from the back hall) Mother, I just got June to sleep. She's gonna wake her right up.
TIMMY:
That's Mom.
NETTA:
Why didn't you come around to the back, Viola?

[35, 7-9]

Wilson has used the same technique in the rewriting of this play that he used in Fifth of July. Whereas in A Tale Told a relatively minor character begins the play much as Gwen and John did in the 1978 script of 5th of July, Talley & Son begins with Timmy, Sally, Lottie, and Eldon; the four most important characters in the story. Timmy succinctly explains the plot to come, and the relationship between Sally and her family is shown immediately; her relationship with her family and Matt Friedman is made clear from the beginning and is seen from her point of view. This is a marked contrast to A Tale Told, and once again proves that Mason's directorial desire to make things clear to the audience without cluttering the play guided Wilson in making these changes, even if it meant making some textual sacrifices.

MASON:
He's actually very good about—better than most any playwright that I've worked with—about giving up on some beautiful writing sometimes. This play particularly, the one that we're doing now, Talley & Son, when we did it in 1981 in New York, had some of the most beautiful writing that Lanford's ever done. There were soliloquies that the character Timmy had that had to be cut right out because as beautifully as they're written, they're not …
WILSON:
What I was really dealing with was the power and role of a melodrama, and I didn't understand, 'cause I was deliberately trying to write a melodrama. I didn't understand the power that those damn stories have, and I would stop it right in the middle of a …
MASON:
Brilliant speech.
WILSON:
… five minute brilliant speech, and all you wanted to do was shoot this guy and get him off the stage because we're trying to follow a story here. And you … where's the hook? You just wanted to hook the character. Didn't matter if it was well-written or not, you know. Fuck that, it was like, we're talkin' about …
MASON:
A story.
WILSON:
… a story here. And suddenly he's telling me about how it feels to be blown up. … Get him off the stage.
MASON:
There was that one scene where he integrated that story about, “Wow, I was walking along …”
WILSON:
More integrated into the play now.
Q:
Yeah, but he's sitting on the couch, as opposed to being out on … in the green light or whatever.
WILSON:
Yes. I don't think that stops the play as much now anymore but it. … That is a tiny little part from the speech that was in there earlier, and it's readapted.
MASON:
Also there's a …
WILSON:
I hope he doesn't stop the play. Did you feel it stopped the play?
Q:
No.
WILSON:
Because before people were saying, “I wanted to kill that guy,” and “What's he doing in the play?” What he's doing in the play was saying some of the best writing I've ever written in my life but it had no business there. And they were right. By the end of the run, Marshall and I both wanted to kill … we had thought it as so wonderful when we were working on it, and by the end of the run, when that power, that melodrama was really working, but we both wanted to just get the hook on that guy and get him out of there. We needed his perspective, so it was the idea of reworking so that his perspective can … I mean, we finally made each other understand what we wanted on that.

[10]

The critical reaction to Talley & Son was as mixed as the reviews for A Tale Told, with most of the same New York critics sounding the same themes as they did four years earlier. Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times:

Lanford Wilson, one of the most generous-spirited of American playwrights, has devoted more than four years to creating a play about mean-spirited rich people. It may well be that the author of such compassionate works as Balm in Gilead and The Hot l Baltimore is just too nice a fellow for the task. Mr. Wilson's revised and improved drama of familial greed and backstabbing, known as A Tale Told in its 1981 premiere but now titled Talley & Son, is for much of its length, amusing entertainment—especially as performed by a crack Circle Repertory Company cast. But if Mr. Wilson has been, on other occasions, a persuasive heir to Tennessee Williams, in this play he remains an unconvincing stand-in for Lillian Hellman. …

Still, for all the flaws that remain from A Tale Told the improvements in Talley & Son are real. What was a dull, superficial play is now a superficial play that clicks smartly along until mid-Act II. In addition to tightening, focusing, and clarifying (one need no longer refer constantly to the family tree in the program), Mr. Wilson has added a goodly share of funny lines. …

Mr. Wilson's longtime collaborator, the director Marshall W. Mason, has also helped by lightening the production's tone. The Talley household buzzes, as one line claims, “like a swarm of gnats”—so much so that the sadder interludes, notably a primal wartime tableau delicately choreographed for the Act I curtain, have more impact now.

Even so, as far as Talley & Son is concerned, the honorable time may have come for Mr. Wilson to give up the ghost.

[44]

Douglas Watt in the Daily News saw no improvement: “What's new? Well, the ghost of the youngest Talley boy, blown apart on Saipan, a figure so bothersome in A Tale Told, has been built up here to handle even more narration than before, but oddly enough becomes more attractive in Robert MacNaughton's [sic] direct and appealing performance.” He concludes, “But I think we've had the Talley's up to here” (45). Howard Kissel in Women's Wear Daily was kinder:

The major change Wilson seems to have made is to lighten the character of a young son who has died in the Pacific … who speaks directly to the audience. This character seems more carefully woven into the play than he did four years ago. This modification only strengthened my impression that Talley and Son is an extraordinarily rich play, an important addition to Talley's Folley [sic] and 5th of July.

[46]

Clive Barnes in the Post noted Mason's contribution to the play: “Mason has directed as impeccably as ever—he stages Wilson as if there was no barrier of intent between himself and the playwright. The performances are as natural as life, and neat in their avoidance of Norman Rockwell” (47). Mel Gussow, perhaps more familiar with the inner workings of the Circle Rep, cited Wilson's commitment to characters:

It is Wilson's dramatic artistry that he is able to draw us into the realm of the Talleys, encouraging us to understand the grasping fathers and sons as well as those few who can embrace a life of individuality and responsibility. One reason for looking forward to the promised play about Whistler Talley is that as a character he should bring out the best in the author. In his work, Wilson has an irrepressible congeniality and a longing for sustained relationships. While Lillian Hellman seemed to warm to the task of unmasking the malicious Hubbards, Wilson is more comfortable—and more revealing—with such likable characters as Charlotte, Sally, Matt Friedman and Ken Talley Jr. For this reason, among others, Talley's Folly and Fifth of July are better realized plays than Talley & Son.

[48]

The staging of Talley & Son represented a renewal in the collaboration. It was the first work Mason and Wilson did together after Mason's two-year sabbatical, and it marked the return of the repertory concept, running concurrently with Paul Osborn's Tomorrow's Monday. The lukewarm reception of the work of the company and financial difficulties during the two years may have illustrated that Mason's guiding hand was needed at the helm more than ever. But it may have been more of just the natural process of production and collaboration that caused the lapse. Jeremy Gerard, in an article on Mason's return, wrote:

“I hope, as I return to my responsibilities as artistic director,” Mr. Mason wrote in a memo to the company upon his return, “to keep matters of conscience close to our concerns, and to integrate those concerns into our work process.”

“Critics were saying, ‘What's happened to Circle Rep?’” he told a visitor. “It's as though we somehow failed an obligation. It doesn't follow that because the process is good, that everything is going to be successful. We have no obligation except to do the best plays we can come up with.”

[49]

Wilson was already working on Burn This when Talley & Son was running in October 1985. Whether or not he will follow through on his promise to write more about the Talley clan remains to be seen, but if he does not, he may have left a clue at the end of Fifth of July about how he envisioned the future of the Talley clan:

SHIRLEY:
I don't care. The important thing is to find your vocation and work like hell at it. I don't think heredity has anything to do with anything.
KEN:
Certainly not.
SHIRLEY:
You do realize, though, the terrible burden.
KEN:
How's that?
SHIRLEY:
I am the last of the Talleys. And the whole family has just come to nothing at all so far. Fortunately, it's on my shoulders. … I won't fail us.

[21, 75]