Publisher's Synopsis
This collection includes three full-length plays: SALLY'S GONE, SHE LEFT HER NAME, APPOINTMENT WITH A HIGHWIRE LADY, and SALLY'S PORCH. SALLY'S GONE, SHE LEFT HER NAME: A play about the last two weeks in the life of a perfect American family. APPOINTMENT WITH A HIGHWIRE LADY: The play is about Richard, a young man in trouble, who cannot remember his past, and Louise, a friend, who comes to visit. SALLY'S PORCH: A movie star visits his mother in a psychiatric hospital. SALLY'S GONE, SHE LEFT HER NAME "I first encountered the work of playwright Russell Davis ... at the world premiere of his FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SALLY ... I found myself hanging on every word and admiring Davis's singular communicatory skills more with each passing moment ... amusing us more than a little en route with a verbal wizardry that warms and delights. Davis at the same time painlessly imparts a deeper universal meaning having to do with personal signposts lost and regained ..." -Nels Nelson, Daily News APPOINTMENT WITH A HIGHWIRE LADY "Having flirted with death, a young man has crash landed into a state mental hospital, where he sits silently in the dayroom. He has lost his sense of touch and his ability to focus his eyes and his attention. In Russell Davis's APPOINTMENT WITH A HIGHWIRE LADY, the patient ... is gradually drawn back into life by a friend from his past ... Mr Davis is subtle and unsentimental in telling a story about two people trying to find a connection that has previously eluded them. The play ... has a sensitive awareness of the renewable vitality within an interrupted relationship. In extremis, says the playwright, can come understanding." -Mel Gussow, The New York Times "There's so much good writing in Russell Davis's APPOINTMENT WITH A HIGHWIRE LADY ... During it's penultimate moment, APPOINTMENT WITH A HIGHWIRE LADY achieves a level of descriptive prose rarely seen on a stage ... all of Davis's ideas merge into an ornate tapestry and the delicacy of his weaving becomes, for the first time, apparent." -Bob Harrington, New York Post SALLY'S PORCH "Cynthia Decker, who's committed herself to a psychiatric hospital, is visited by her movie-star son, Christopher. She's seen his latest western, and especially liked the way he rode a horse. Christopher must tell her that Richard, his stuntman, did that. She's disappointed. But Cynthia disappointed Christopher six years earlier when she walked out of the house and his life. She doesn't seem particularly sorry, and tries to explain much of what she's done via her rewrite of the Cinderella myth ... when Christopher agrees to direct mom's Cinderella play, he decides to ask stuntman Richard to play one of the fairy godmothers ... it must be said that Davis is an expert at exposition. The way we gradually learn who Cynthia and Christopher are - and their relationship to each other - is as good as playwriting gets." -Peter Filichia, The Star-Ledger
