Comedy-Drama/ 5 Men, 2 Women/ Full Length, Three Acts
Synopsis:
(from The Denver Post): “The Cellar is the story of the kind of family unit that Tom Wolfe used to call ‘Mom-Dad-Buddy-Sis’ in his satirical excursions across middle-class America. Playwright George Freek has created his own nuclear family unit called Mom, Dad, Sunny, and Honey — plus a blind man who lives in their basement.
“Like Pinter, Freek can turn a kitchen paring knife or an ordinary screwdriver into a cottage monster . . . . The most insipid small talk about the weather or fast-food coupons or soap operas begins to build into a house of cards, all smeary-fingered and stained with misuse. For a time, the parents’ dialogue is parody, but it tilts sickeningly with the arrival of Sunny, the amoral cheat and son of the house. We realize that we are in the whitewashed interior of a cherfully clean bungalow where invisible fungus creeps. Father is a closet pederast, mother is desensitized, and daughter Honey is a prostitute.”Freek reveals all this by means of lurching and elliptical speeches . . . . For years, this family has sheltered the practitioners of incest, arson, and prostitution (as it now shelters the blind man in the cellar) while gulping an all-American diet of Cokes and potato chips.”
“Subtle and often clever . . . . Freek’s cynical message is that people with pointless and barren lives can be kept in a state of joyless euphoria through the ideals epitomized by the television commercial . . . . the play’s greatest virtue is that it is very funny while it addresses these issues”
– Rocky Mountain News“Well worth the visit.”
– Denver Post
Amateur and professional rights:
George Freek
515 Douglas St.
Belvidere, Illinois
USA 61008
Ph.: (815) 547-7521
Email: gfreek@juno.com
About the Playwright: George Freek’s plays have been produced by the Organic Theater in Chicago, the Milwaukee Repertory, the West Coast Ensemble in Los Angeles, and the Pittsburgh New Works Festival, as well as the 13th Street Theater, Love Creek Productions, and the Theater-Studio in New York. He has been playwright-in-residence at the New American Theater in Rockford, Southern Methodist University, and Southern Illinois University, and has received grants from the Illinois Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Cellar was first produced by The Changing Scene, Denver, Colorado, in April, 1988.