Metropolitan Playhouse
Virtual Playhouse
Presents
A Screened Reading
of

EVER YOUNG
Written by ALICE GERSTENBERG

Featuring
SIDNEY FORTNER, WENDY MERRITT, ROSINA FERNHOFF, & KIM YANCEY-MOORE

Directed by ALEX ROE

Backgrounds by PAMELA LAWTON

Talkback with the Cast

www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/virtualplayhouse

June 6, 2020, 8 p.m.

Author Alice Gerstenberg once again slashes the party balloons of those who believe that age matters. Four ladies of social status share a conversation at the Royal Poinciana Hotel, the place to be during The Season in 1921 Palm Beach, Florida. Soft, sophisticated conversation, to be sure, delivered with smiles and politesse. Their opinions differ, but their society-deb upbringing allows them to cover the barbs with spun-sugar.

First, Mrs. Dorchester and Mrs. Payne-Dexter. The latter is a bit older. Both wealthy widows, New York society, miss their husbands. Mrs. Payne-Dexter is very rigid in her beliefs and does not care for these young debs. She terrorizes them with her status. Mrs. Dorchester is a bit more understanding. “Let them have their day.” Mrs. Payne-Dexter’s reply: “My hair may be white but my blood is still red.”

Enter Mrs. Blanchard, an old friend but, at 71, younger than the other two. She uses an elegant cane, but announces that she is throwing it away! She is tired of being “helped”. Ugh! Just “think youth”, she says, and you will be young. She is celebrating her divorce after forty years of misery! Freedom! She has taken up roulette. Oh my! She doesn’t miss her husband, but drifts back in time to the one man she did truly love. He was lost in the Boer War. She has never forgotten him.

Spying an elegant woman nearby, they are dying to ask her to join them, but they do not know her. Mrs. Payne-Dexter kicks into gear, waving to her. “It’s so nice to see again, my dear.” What can Mrs. Courtney-Page do? “Hello! It’s been too long.” It turns out that she was an ultra-famous San Francisco deb. She displays her strings of pearls, each from a different lover, fiancé, or husband. She is younger by a generation. Joyful and optimistic, she looks forward to finding her next husband.

On some things they agree: Mental lethargy is the worst enemy and to stay young, one must love.

The actresses were awesome. The story becomes more complicated in the end, but cannot be revealed here. Let’s just say that women, young or old, have that legendary “women’s’ intuition”. They can read a situation and react to it without batting an eyelash. Age does not diminish our magical power of sisterhood.

-Karen D’Onofrio-