Splendor in the Grass

"The place is a lonely clearing by a river in eastern Kansas, the time the late 1920's. They, a boy and a girl, embrace wordlessly but ardently, holding close in the heavy, dark silence." That's how the play sets the stage with the powerful love connection between a sweet, innocent and poor little Wilma Dean and the handsome star athlete Bud, son of the richest man in town....the catch of a lifetime....who has a menacing sister depicted as a trollop. The story is one of a frustrating, painful love that turns the beautiful Wilma Dean into an emotional mess, and is kind of a corny love story actually until you factor in the time and the place where we experience prohibition, see the deadly after effects of the stock market crash and hear about the workings of Freud.