First produced on Broadway in 1953, IN THE SUMMER HOUSE is a strange and darkly funny work. It is the only play by Jane Bowles, whose bohemian life and world travels ended in 1973, leaving behind a very small body of work that includes this play, a novel and some short stories. Maybe because she was not as prolific as other writers, Jane Bowles is less well known today than she deserves to be. Yet she remains highly regarded by her literary contemporaries. Gore Vidal called her "the finest writer of fiction we have in the United States." Set in the late 1940s on the border between Mexico and California, IN THE SUMMER HOUSE paints a bold and passionate portrait of the world of an aristocratic woman and her daughter. The play explores the mysterious and powerful attachment between the two and, in a series of striking and sometimes surrealistic scenes that look more like the theater of Pinter and Genet, meditates on a hidden crime.
July 8 - August 22, 1993
