Mollie Lovejoy, described as "a beautiful young woman" (who turns out to be thirty years old) has a house and apparently a barn on a small apple farm in NY. An architect's car has broken down on the road and she picks him up. He falls in love with her at first sight, and immediately boards with her, in the barn I found out later. I was wondering how all these people managed to stuff themselves in a two bedroom house. Her ex-husband's mother and sister are also staying with her. Her son, Paris, has to sleep on the couch.
She married her husband Phillip, a writer, when she was fifteen, a day after they met at the Peach Festival and impulsively had sex in a briar patch. Although Phillip was engaged to the daughter of the governor of Georgia, not to mention that since his younger sister is forty now, he has to be at least eleven years older than Mollie, and probably more. So...a twenty-six year old man with a fifteen year old girl. Phillip used to beat Mollie and throw her outside naked, plus he drank a lot. He cheated on her, also a lot. She stayed with him because "he had a lot of charm." But she did divorce him when he said she used clichés. Then she remarried him because she was "under a spell." Then he divorced her because he found someone he liked better. However, Phillip thinks he can come and go as he pleases, and Mollie allows this.
But now the architect wants her. Her former mother-in-law tries to throw John Tucker together with her daughter, Sister. Mollie has told John that Sister came out (debuted) fifteen years ago, and nothing happened, so she was a great disappointment to her mother. However, Sister herself told John Tucker that she's forty, so that would have meant that she came out when she was twenty-five. But during a conversation with Mollie and Sister, Mother Lovejoy states that Sister came out when she was eighteen. Someone has a severe problem with math.
Phillip gets out of the sanatorium which his mother has been paying for. He's a writer with one successful novel (his first), and nothing after that has gone well. Phillip is very spoiled and used to getting his way. He comes to the house, where he asks his son how old he is. (This is how I found out - going on thirteen - I didn't know if he was six or fifteen). He wants the architect to go, and Mollie to kowtow to him some more, until he feels like leaving again. He won't tell her that he loves her, though. They just have this special thing that is meant to be.
The characters are just silly. Mollie is an idiot. John Tucker must have been desperate. Phillip should have been in prison. The dialogue is unrealistic. One person says something, the other person replies with something that has nothing to do with what the other person said. Supposedly this play was based on Carson and Reeves McCuller's marriage. She must have been the Phillip Lovejoy character. I can see why this play didn't make it.
