Verdigris

Verdigris

Theatre West
3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West Hollywood

Verdigris is a green or greenish-blue coating that forms like rust on brass, bronze or copper, especially with age or neglect. It can also cast an eerily beautiful glow. It doesn't just happen to brass. In the small town of Edgar, Oklahoma in 1972, young Richard, an aspiring actor, answers an ad for work offering free college tuition as a perk. He's going to work for Margaret Fielding, a widowed woman in a wheelchair whose limited mobility has not daunted her entrepreneurial spirit. She runs a variety of businesses, selling seeds, beans, and dispatching a taxicab. Once she was young and exquisitely beautiful, desired by more than one man. Illness, age and decay have gradually transformed her into a curmudgeon. The manipulative Margaret treats her sibling, her son, her employees, local politicos, and others abusively, even those devoted to her. Her son would like to move her from the crumbling family home to a retirement community, but she fights him tooth and nail, when she'll talk to him at all. She tries to sabotage the relationship of Richard and his pretty girlfriend. Why? Can there be any ultimate redemption for Margaret and those around her? Or will things at the Fielding home just continue to fall apart?

Thru - Apr 26, 2015