Talley’s Folly Tickets

About Talley’s Folly

Lanford Wilson's beautiful and funny Pulitzer Prize winning 1980 play introduces us to Matt Friedman and Sally Talley, who come together, for better or for worse, in a gazebo on a river bank in Missouri in 1944. Lanford Wilson was one of the seminal figures of the 1960s New York City Off-Broadway movement. He helped found the legendary Circle Repertory Company in the West Village, a company that would produce such extraordinary actors as Christopher Reeve, Jeff Daniels, William Hurt, Swoozie Kurtz, Cynthia Nixon and Richard Thomas. Among the many playwrights that got their start or found solid footing in the New York theatre were Jon Robin Baitz, Marsha Norman and Craig Lucas. Talley's Folly is part of a trilogy of plays that include Fifth of July, set 31 years later on the same Missouri estate as Talley's Folly and Talley & Son. Wilson had planned to write as many as nine plays about the Talley's of Lebanon, Missouri prior to his untimely death in 2011 at the age of 74. The original production of Talley's Folly played on Broadway and starred Judd Hirsh and Trish Hawkins. Its only other London production, in 1983, was presented at the Lyric Hammersmith and starred Haley Mills and Jonathan Pryce. Burning Coal Theatre Company is an award winning theatre from Raleigh,North Carolina. Its 2014 production at the Cockpit of David Edgar's sprawling, three play Iron Curtain Trilogy received a 4 star review from Michael Billington in the Guardian. Its 2016 production of Dark Vanilla Jungle by Phillip Ridley played the Cockpit and received exceptionally strong critical response.