| Synopsis: | AN AMERICAN WIFE
A Play by
Karen Blomain & Michael Downend
Synopsis
As World War II ends, Frank Flynn, a young soldier returns to a Pennsylvania mining town with his war bride, Stella, a Jew from Poland. Forced to move into his family’s small row house already crammed with three generations: mother, brother, sister-in-law and their child, the couple tries to make do. The closing of the mine where Frank believed a job waited for him and the attitude of his mother and the rest of the town toward his Jewish wife, dispirits the returning soldier.
In contrast, ebullient and charming Stella, gradually works her charm and magic on her new family and the townspeople. A hint of what she endured during the war comes through when she makes a brief reference to her lost sister. While her new husband and some of the other unemployed miners succumb to alcohol abuse and start to develop various implausible schemes for making money, Stella is the first to report for work at a newly-opened pants factory. The other women in town follow. Despite her limited English and the unspoken sorrow of her past, Stella buoys her husband’s hope for the future and supports him. Just as it becomes clear that Stella is, as the grandmother predicted, pregnant, the specter of her husband’s old girlfriend intrudes. Were promises made and broken? Stella is haunted now by Frank’s past as well as her own.
Frank Flynn, the soldier/hero and his brother concoct a plan to drive to New York to buy Christmas trees to sell in their hometown. At first, the plan meets with ridicule and resistance by the mother-in-law, the brother’s wife and others in the town; only Stella stalwartly supports her husband. While the men are off on their Christmas tree expedition and the grandmother visits her sister, the young women briefly throw off their immediate troubles and cook, dance, drink and share their stories. The two women, sisters-in-law and unlikely friends bond in their mutual worry. Stella shares her horrific experiences in Poland during the war.
In the meantime, the men barely avert a disaster on a snowy road when a vision warns them away from a precipice and disaster. The apparition takes the form of Stella’s lost sister. The men return—the trip and investment proving a triumph and a new start for the Flynn family. The problem of Frank’s other girl is solved when the woman in question marries someone else. The Flynn family prepares for the holiday and the birth of the new child.
|
