SOLITAIRE

Michel Campbell, a man in his late fifties who has lived with a much younger woman for a number of years, is alone and confronted with the task of sorting out both his own actions and those of his young lover and the man who has killed himself rather than lose access to the woman with whom Michael has been living. At the opening of the play, Michael is playing cards by him self. Before him is a large collection of letters, correspondence between the two lovers prior to the termination of their relationship and the one’s suicide and other’s subsequent mental breakdown. As he turns his attention to the letters, Michael’s begins an exploration of the love relationship which he had unknowingly, or largely unknowingly, stood in the way of. The passion sense of participation finally draws a self-defensive reaction out of him. By the end of the play, the older man has resigned himself to a quiet, isolated existence. He has come to know about, and he refuses to even visit the girl, concluding that there is nothing that he can do for her and that “life is a game that you play by yourself.”

The play mixes realistic presentation with the more stylized representations of chamber theatre in order to provide for an inner experience which, through the juxtaposition of naturalistic and highly impressionistic performances, seeks to provide an experimental theatrical experience which is a combination of traditional and avant-grade presentation. In its position as the third piece within this trilogy, Solitaire brings together the diverse elements of content and form which the two previous pieces have offered. Although it, like each of the plays, stands completely on its own, the combination of the three plays together makes of Solitaire a fully unique theatre-going experience.