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 her. At the opening of the play, Michael is playing a game of solitaire. 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 Michael turns his attention to the letters, he begins an exploration of the love relationship which he had unknowingly unfolded around him. By the end of the play, Michael has resigned himself to a quiet, isolated existence, deciding not even to visit the girl, concluding that there is nothing he can do for her and that “life is a game that you play by yourself.”

Solitaire mixes realistic and stylized representations in order to bring together the elements of content and form which the two previous pieces within this trilogy have offered. Although it, like each of the other plays, stands completely on its own, the combination of the three works together makes Solitaire the resolution of a fully unique theatre-going experience.