Book of Days is set in a small town dominated by a cheese plant, a fundamentalist church, and a community theater. When the owner of the cheese plant dies mysteriously in a hunting accident, Ruth—his bookkeeper—suspects murder. Cast as Joan of Arc in a local theater production of George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan, Ruth takes on the attributes of her fictional character and launches a one-woman campaign to see justice done. As she digs deeper into the events surrounding her former boss’s demise and tries to communicate her suspicions to local authority figures, she runs into a web of small town jealousies, religious hypocrisy, greed, and lies, opening the possibility that she, like Joan, will become a martyr.
Wilson’s script seems at times like an updated version of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town with a liberal sprinkling of Twin Peaks, The Laramie Project, and Murder, She Wrote. He uses note-perfect dialogue to create characters which are remarkable both for their comic turns and for their enormous depth. As in some of his earlier works, Wilson pays homage to traditional theatrical conventions and then shatters them, creating a work with a truly unique dramatic style.
Wilson’s play is a disquieting view of present-day Americana, of small towns and smaller-minded people, and those afraid to speak out, hiding behind a mask of decency, religious fervor, and a simplistic but resolute daydream of right and wrong.
"...[Wilson's] best work since Fifth of July ... An intriguing, prismatic and thoroughly engrossing depiction of contemporary small-town life with a murder mystery at it's core."
Variety |
