By the Sea, by the Sea, by the Beautiful Sea

by Joe Pintauro, Terrence McNally, Lanford Wilson

The opening play is Mr. Pintauro's DAWN: Quentin and his sister Veronica, together with his wife Pat, gather at the beach to scatter their mother's ashes. The act itself is a closure of sorts, but it stirs up conflicts between the three as marital wounds and sibling rivalries never dealt with are finally confronted. Mr. Wilson's DAY takes a playful look at Ace, a local gardener who goes to the beach on his lunch hour and runs into Macy, a sexpot yuppie (complete with a chic beach umbrella and laptop computer). Macy seduces Ace into applying her tanning lotion, but then the gardener's nutty girlfriend arrives to give them all a run for their money. Mr. McNally's DUSK focuses on Willy, a hunk at the beach, and the two women, Dana and Marsha, who would do anything to have him. We discover that all three suffer from their own personal prisons from which they need to escape, and luckily they seem to have found the right place and time to do so.

72 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1996