RIMERS OF ELDRITCH, THE

by Wilson, Lanford

The story itself is simple; a man has been murdered and the mystery concerns the identity of the man who murdered him and the circumstances. In order to solve it, the playwright looks at the outside and inside of his tiny, mid-western town Eldritch. He looks at a middle-aged woman who falls in love with the young man who comes to work in her cafe. He looks at a coarse, nasty woman mistreating her senile mother, who is obsessed with visions of Eldritch being evil. He looks at a tender relationship between a young man and a dreamy, crippled girl. But Wilson sees far more than this - He is grasping the very fabric of Bible-Belt America, with its catchword morality and its capability for the vicious. He senses the rhythm of its life and the cruelty it can impose. By the end of the play, the portrait of Eldritch has been fully painted and the truth of its revelations will be pondered long after the stage lights have dimmed and the play has ended.