The House of Connelly

The house of Connelly: This play came at the peak of Green's fame, after he'd received a Pulitzer Prize and a couple Broadway productions in the late 1920s. The highly-influential Group Theatre chose this to be its first production. "The House of Connelly" takes place at the turn of the century on a decaying plantation in North Carolina. The Connelly family no longer has its patriarch, and young Will is well-meaning and principled, but weak-willed and not made of the legendary Confederate stuff his father and grandfathers were. As a result the large estate goes to seed and all its tenants scrounge for food. Some new white tenants, a father and a beautiful daughter, offer some promise of either redeeming the estate or usurping it, depending on whose perspective. Will's family -- mother, sisters and uncle -- is mainly of the latter opinion. Two witch-like Black women, Big Sis and Big Sue, haunt the premises with their dancing, their chanting and their laughter. They have their eyes trained on Patsy, the uppity tenant.