Synopsis of Ugly Girl
PEG, a woman in her later years, has spent the last half of her life endlessly revising “The Ugly Girl,” a musical written to avenge the death of her adolescent love. She believes her play to be a tragedy of atonement. In reality, it’s an inadvertently comic mix of vaudeville, Punch and Judy, melodrama and English music hall-- in short, a tragedy in burlesque.
Her four daughters INGA, BOAZ, JINX and WARK and her boarder/lover SCHULTZ have felt compelled –once happily but now reluctantly-- to enact Peg’s “masterpiece” through every stage of its development. Having completed her latest draft in the wee hours of the morning, PEG unexpectedly dies, leaving her daughters and Schultz in a quandary –what is left for them beyond Peg’s musical? Choosing not to examine that question they embark on one last performance, in part because it seems a fitting homage; in part because they secretly share Peg’s own mad obsessions with thwarted happy endings, blighted love, clandestine sex, brute oppression and sweet revenge. Only PEG’s daughter JINX, however, bothers to read the latest draft of the musical, a draft that contains a substantial, “life-altering” revision of its finale.
Synopsis of Peg’s semi-autobiographical play-within-the play: That quintessential couple Punch and Judy have conceived a very ugly daughter, so ugly that Mr. Punch has tossed her into the garbage. During a heated argument about the pros and cons of the Ugly Girl’s continued existence Mr. Punch kills his wife, Judy. He quickly remarries, sends his ugly daughter to ugly girl school and then tries again for a more acceptable heir. None is forthcoming.
The Ugly Girl returns to her homestead. Tension ensues. Judy’s Ghost enters the picture and introduces unwelcome complications— namely remembrance and revenge. A further complication is introduced in the person of the Pretty Girl with whom the Ugly Girl becomes instantly, hopeless smitten. Mr. Punch, his limited guilt subsumed into limitless ire, looks for socially acceptable ways to rid himself of the daughter he loathes. An accusation of homosexuality seems just the ticket.
What results is a kind of madness, at the end of which Ugly Girl caves in to the demands of tragedy and dies; and Pretty Girl, the simplest pawn in the game, is left to vow undying fidelity to an ideal that is not quite her own. Or rather, that was the tragic conclusion to every other draft PEG wrote. Her last draft concluded differently, with an ending that was meant to be a happy one-- and would have been if anyone but JINX had bothered to read it.
Synopsis of the Ugly Girl’s play-within-the-play-within-the-play: In an effort to recall her Father to his guilt, the Ugly Girl has written a morality play called “In the House of the Moles” in which a hapless porcupine has been turned out of the mole hole where he sought shelter from an impending blizzard. The porcupine is desperate, the moles implacable. Then, the tables are turned. Things look deservingly grim for the wicked moles until the porcupine suffers a miraculous change of heart. Of all of the plays, this is the one that ought to have a happy ending. It doesn’t.
Her four daughters INGA, BOAZ, JINX and WARK and her boarder/lover SCHULTZ have felt compelled –once happily but now reluctantly-- to enact Peg’s “masterpiece” through every stage of its development. Having completed her latest draft in the wee hours of the morning, PEG unexpectedly dies, leaving her daughters and Schultz in a quandary –what is left for them beyond Peg’s musical? Choosing not to examine that question they embark on one last performance, in part because it seems a fitting homage; in part because they secretly share Peg’s own mad obsessions with thwarted happy endings, blighted love, clandestine sex, brute oppression and sweet revenge. Only PEG’s daughter JINX, however, bothers to read the latest draft of the musical, a draft that contains a substantial, “life-altering” revision of its finale.
Synopsis of Peg’s semi-autobiographical play-within-the play: That quintessential couple Punch and Judy have conceived a very ugly daughter, so ugly that Mr. Punch has tossed her into the garbage. During a heated argument about the pros and cons of the Ugly Girl’s continued existence Mr. Punch kills his wife, Judy. He quickly remarries, sends his ugly daughter to ugly girl school and then tries again for a more acceptable heir. None is forthcoming.
The Ugly Girl returns to her homestead. Tension ensues. Judy’s Ghost enters the picture and introduces unwelcome complications— namely remembrance and revenge. A further complication is introduced in the person of the Pretty Girl with whom the Ugly Girl becomes instantly, hopeless smitten. Mr. Punch, his limited guilt subsumed into limitless ire, looks for socially acceptable ways to rid himself of the daughter he loathes. An accusation of homosexuality seems just the ticket.
What results is a kind of madness, at the end of which Ugly Girl caves in to the demands of tragedy and dies; and Pretty Girl, the simplest pawn in the game, is left to vow undying fidelity to an ideal that is not quite her own. Or rather, that was the tragic conclusion to every other draft PEG wrote. Her last draft concluded differently, with an ending that was meant to be a happy one-- and would have been if anyone but JINX had bothered to read it.
Synopsis of the Ugly Girl’s play-within-the-play-within-the-play: In an effort to recall her Father to his guilt, the Ugly Girl has written a morality play called “In the House of the Moles” in which a hapless porcupine has been turned out of the mole hole where he sought shelter from an impending blizzard. The porcupine is desperate, the moles implacable. Then, the tables are turned. Things look deservingly grim for the wicked moles until the porcupine suffers a miraculous change of heart. Of all of the plays, this is the one that ought to have a happy ending. It doesn’t.
