WIDOW'S BLIND DATE, THE

by Horowitz, Israel

The scene is the wastepaper processing plant in a blue-collar Massachusetts town. Two workmen, Archie and George, are drinking beer and swapping stories, mostly about their apparently extensive sexual conquests. Archie mentions that Margy, a friend from high school and now a widow, has invited him to join her for a dinner. When she arrives to pick Archie up, the mood of the play shifts. Suddenly, the play’s original macho bantering takes on new and dangerous meanings. Margy will subtly set the two men against each other while gradually revealing her contempt for her former classmates, whose lives have remained in a rut, she says, while she went on to bigger and better things living in the big city. But this is only the beginning of Margy’s complaint. Piece by piece Margy reconstructs a night, fifteen years ago, when she was gang-raped after a party by a group of boys who included not only Archie and George, but also her blind brother, whom she’s come back to town to visit. In the end, Margy gets what she came for: her revenge, and a violent, breath-stopping exorcism of the guilt and remorse that has plagued them all throughout the years.