Beth Henley, author of Crimes of the Heart, reinvents the high comedy of pretty weddings and happy marriages for the modern age.

January 15-18, 22-25, 29-31, 2004

Directed by George Mulford

Impossible Marriage, starred Holly Hunter as a hugely pregnant and vastly dissatisfied southern belle when it first opened in New York at the Roundabout Theater in 1998. Miss Hunter's role is reprised in Swarthmore by Lori-Nan Engler of Malvern, a newcomer to the Players Club but a veteran performer with credits in New York and Los Angeles.

The intrigue centers on the impending marriage of Pandora Kingsley to a divorced man over twice her age. Impossible, proclaim her mother and her sister (the Holly Hunter character); and they initiate direct action to assure that this unseemly and ill-starred marriage not take place. Playwright Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart) has made her reputation for conflict-laden plots like this, but while composing this one she was herself pregnant; to keep up her spirits, she read through the great, stylish comedies of the classical theater. She read Marivaux and Oscar Wilde, and the notion took her to write a play "just like The Importance of Being Earnest, except by me." The result is a sunny little gem of a play, a latter-day high comedy of (generally good) manners and (uniformly strong) desires. The happy ending manages somehow to suit all the women and astound all the men in the play while it delights the audience.

Audience Advisory:
Impossible Marriage is suitable for all audiences.