THE WIDOW'S VEIL Announced At Metropolitan Virtual Playhouse

The groundbreaking reading series continues as Obie Award winner Metropolitan Playhouse presents its next free "screened" readings, live-streamed at no charge, with talkback to follow: THE WIDOW'S VEIL, Alice Rostetter, streaming at 8 PM Eastern at: www.metropolitanplayhouse.org.

The video will be available through Wednesday, 12/9/20 on the Playhouse webpage, the Metropolitan Playhouse YouTube channel, and the Metropolitan Playhouse Facebook page.

Mrs. MacManus, recently married, is soon to be widowed, as her husband is deathly ill in an offstage room. Mrs. Phelan, a helpful and meddlesome neighbor, advises her on just what to wear, as she helps the younger woman anticipate the joy of being free of her overbearing man. But even the worst expectations don't always come as planned in this dark comedy from an earlier pandemic.

A peek inside a New York tenement building during the Influenza pandemic of the early1918, the play grasps the practically optimistic cynicism needed to face an unpredictable world. And, staged entirely as a conversation through across a dumbwaiter shaft, it is a perfect play for Zoom theater!

Discussion including audience participation follow the readings, with special guest Cheryl Black, PhD, author of THE WOMEN of PROVINCETOWN, Professor Emeritus of Theater History, Dramaturgy, and Acting at the University of Missouri.

Directed by Laura Livingston, the play features Michael Durkin, Erica Knight, Noelle McGrath, and Barb Wengerd. Settings drawn by Vincent Gunn.

Alice Rostetter contributed to The Provincetown Players beginning in 1918, when the company was at the height of its output. Both actress and playwright, she received high praise before and behind the footlights. Also a teacher at the nearby Washington Irving High School, she encouraged one of her students to audition for The Widow's Veil in order to overcome a speech impediment. That student, née Lily Claudetter Chauchoin, was later better known to the world as Claudette Colbert.

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