"Lanford Wilson is the rare dramatist, witty and humorous, who sees all his characters from the inside...Balm is life itself trapped in a play."--New York

"Mr. Wilson handles the collage technique so beautifully that we leave convinced no other method would have served half so well. This reviewer liked Rimers for its fluidity, for its language, for its almost musical sense of pattern."--The New York Times

In Lanford Wilson's moving and powerful play an adolescent Eurasian girl--the child of a union between an American GI and a Vietnamese woman, adopted by a wealthy California couple and obsessive in her search for her father--is drawn to the redwood forests of northern California, where thousands of Vietnam veterans have taken refuge to escape the harsh realities of life in America.

The time is Independence Day, 1944, the place the parlor of the Talley homestead in Lebanon, Missouri. As World War II rages across the seas, the Talleys are beset with crises of a different sort. Slipping into senility, the elder Mr. Talley still has flashes of explosive lucidity, when he schemes to dispose of the local bank among heirs of his own choice, and berates his charming but spineless son, Eldon, for considering the sale of the family garment business to an eastern conglomerate. Also involved in the bickering are Eldon's long-suffering wife, Netta; their son, Buddy, who is home on...

Despite the popular myth that plays arrive at the theater fully formed and ready for production, the truth is that for centuries, most scripts have been developed through a collaborative process in rehearsal and in concert with other theater artists.