Metropolitan Playhouse
presents
The Virtual Playhouse

A Screened Reading
of

REPRESENTING T. A. BUCK

Written by EDNA FERBER

Read by MICHELE LaRUE

Talkback following with JULIE GILBERT, Pulitzer Prize nominee & great-niece of Edna Ferber

October 17, 2020 8 p.m.

www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/virtualplayhouse

Meet Emma McChesney, the brilliant creation of a brilliant author. It’s 1913, and Emma is a woman in a man’s world. She’s a traveling salesperson. And she is good. Very good. Her annual income in today’s dollars would be $84,000. She’s been on the road for nine years. Train after train, hotel after hotel. Yet in her moments alone, she visualizes a homey kitchen where she bakes cookies. Why these feelings? She could buy a little house and make her domestic dreams come true. But she doesn’t.

Wandering downstairs to have dinner, she passes armchairs filled with businessmen, the air filled with cigar smoke. She hears the hint of a piano being played. Beautifully played classical music. Emma finds the salon, sees the lone pianist. She sits quietly in a corner, immersed in the magic. Their eyes meet. Edna Ferber will tell you the rest.

METROPOLITAN PLAYHOUSE has stepped outside the box with this production. It is simply MICHELE LaRUE reading the story aloud. But there’s nothing simple about it. It is a deluxe performance that captures every nuance of Ferber’s tale. Yummy, thought-provoking, entertaining to the max. A real treat.

-Karen D’Onofrio-