A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Tom Mitchell
December 4 - 20

Cast & Crew

Martha Mills as Dorothea
Mindy Manolakes as Bodey
Joi Hoffsommer as Helena
Carly Churchy as Miss Gluck

Scene Design by Colleen Daniel
Costume Design by Amanda Spaanstra
Lighting Design by Christina Bossmin
Sound Design by Theresa Huber
David Swinford, Stage Manager

Set in St. Louis in the mid-1930s, the play focuses on four women struggling for a sense of identity and independence. Dorothea, a deluded Blanche DuBois-like (but more Alma Winemuller-ish) thirty-something civics teacher at the local high school, fantasizes her cad of a beau, school principal T. Ralph Ellis, is really Prince Charming after allowing him to seduce her in the back seat of his car. Her slovenly, older than Dorthea, but good-hearted hard-of-hearing roommate Bodey unrelentingly urges Dottie to strike up a relationship with her portly, fashion-challenged, cigar-chomping twin brother Buddy (who never is seen onstage). Sophie Gluck, a German immigrant manic-depressive mourning the loss of her beloved mother, is another tenant in the building, and Helena is Dottie's upscale and haughty friend and colleague.

Dorothea is planning to leave the crowded, tacky efficiency apartment she shares with Bodey and move in with Helena in order to have a larger and nicer place in which she can entertain the man she believes intends to marry her. Helena arrives to get a check from Dorothea to cover her share of the first month's rent. Dorothea is scheduled to join Bodey and Buddy for their weekly Sunday picnic in Creve Coeur Park, a short trolley car ride away, but she delays her departure, certain Mr. Ellis is going to call. Unbeknownst to her, his engagement to another woman has been announced in the society section of the morning newspaper, which Bodey, anticipating her reaction, has managed to conceal from her. Helena cruelly reveals the news, leaving Dorothea devastated and no longer interested in moving to a more expensive apartment she no longer needs and can't afford. Angered by the sudden change in plans, Helena tells Dorothea she's on a social and cultural level with Bodey and Buddy, and therefore undeserving of her friendship, and stalks out. Dorothea, realizing the unappealing Buddy may be her only chance for love, rushes off to catch him and his sister at the trolley stop.