'This is a play by Wendy Kesselman. It is a short two character play made up of four scenes. The play has strong Jewish themes and has some surreal qualities as well. The play was first performed in 1986.
The two characters are Daisy, an adolescent, and her grandmother Nana. Based on her behavior, Daisy must be a younger adolescent as for the most part she is very childish. It makes me think seeing the play performed would add clarity to this issue as she reads very young for much of the play but shifts somewhat drastically into a more adult demeanor. Daisy is visiting her grandmother for a weekend, yet, because of her worsening relationship with her parents, it will be cut short. Daisy is in a bad mood. While the two characters clearly seem to care for one another, they do not understand each other. They seem to playing at the idea of being grandmother and grand-daughter rather than actually confronting each other as people or individuals.
Daisy is not getting along with her mother and they are arguing all the time. Nana also does not get along with Daisy;s mother, her daughter. The play starts out very slowly with a lot of repeated conversation, mostly Nana questioning Daisy but trivializing her responses. They sing songs and Nana quizzes Daisy on her German. Some of the play is in German, Yiddish, and Hebrew, and not all of it is translated. In a phone conversation, Nana convinces Daisy’s mother to allow her to spend the night. Nana tells the story of her false friend who stopped acknowledging her when she was a girl because of her Jewishness during WWII where Nana lived in an unnamed but German occupied country. She then tells of losing her sisters in the Holocaust.
This roughly covers the events of scenes I and II, It is in scene III where the the play's nature shifts and what felt like a realistic drama becomes something darker and more absurd. During a card game, Daisy suddenly attacks Nana, mocking Nana’s wartime experience and her own lack of connection to her heritage. There would be something very affecting about this if there had been more of a foundation for the style and the behavior. The play ends with a reconciliation of sorts and a slight role reversal with Daisy now attending to Nana’s emotional well-being using some of the same language from scene I, verbatim but with the line assignments switched.
This play was a bit confusing and hard to read. I think it might play better than it reads. There is a long section without dialogue and it made for dull reading. I am unsure as to how I feel about this play. I found it clumsy but I feel there are some ideas lurking in it that might be better expressed in performance.
The two characters are Daisy, an adolescent, and her grandmother Nana. Based on her behavior, Daisy must be a younger adolescent as for the most part she is very childish. It makes me think seeing the play performed would add clarity to this issue as she reads very young for much of the play but shifts somewhat drastically into a more adult demeanor. Daisy is visiting her grandmother for a weekend, yet, because of her worsening relationship with her parents, it will be cut short. Daisy is in a bad mood. While the two characters clearly seem to care for one another, they do not understand each other. They seem to playing at the idea of being grandmother and grand-daughter rather than actually confronting each other as people or individuals.
Daisy is not getting along with her mother and they are arguing all the time. Nana also does not get along with Daisy;s mother, her daughter. The play starts out very slowly with a lot of repeated conversation, mostly Nana questioning Daisy but trivializing her responses. They sing songs and Nana quizzes Daisy on her German. Some of the play is in German, Yiddish, and Hebrew, and not all of it is translated. In a phone conversation, Nana convinces Daisy’s mother to allow her to spend the night. Nana tells the story of her false friend who stopped acknowledging her when she was a girl because of her Jewishness during WWII where Nana lived in an unnamed but German occupied country. She then tells of losing her sisters in the Holocaust.
This roughly covers the events of scenes I and II, It is in scene III where the the play's nature shifts and what felt like a realistic drama becomes something darker and more absurd. During a card game, Daisy suddenly attacks Nana, mocking Nana’s wartime experience and her own lack of connection to her heritage. There would be something very affecting about this if there had been more of a foundation for the style and the behavior. The play ends with a reconciliation of sorts and a slight role reversal with Daisy now attending to Nana’s emotional well-being using some of the same language from scene I, verbatim but with the line assignments switched.
This play was a bit confusing and hard to read. I think it might play better than it reads. There is a long section without dialogue and it made for dull reading. I am unsure as to how I feel about this play. I found it clumsy but I feel there are some ideas lurking in it that might be better expressed in performance.
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