Independence, first staged in 1983, is one of the earliest of Lee Blessing's theatre works. It's a tidy, well constructed box-set play that announces its theme open-faced with the very title.
The fact that the setting is Independence, Iowa, misleads no one. That speck on the map, population of about 5,500, stands for AnyTown, USA, or at least, AnySmallTown, USA.
Blessing probably started with a schematic diagram: small town, an intermittently crazy mother, three daughters born ten years apart; in the forced circumstances of a reunion, he has the opportunity to portray the Stages of Womankind. Evelyn Briggs is the mom, a tenuous survivor of life in Independence; Kess, the oldest, is the Mature Woman who escaped, now a university professor in Minneapolis and only incidentally a lesbian; Jo the Stay-at-home Daughter sees the prospect of dutiful daughterdom and, probably, spilnsterhood before her; and Sherry is a Luscious Good-time Girl in high school, itching to hit adulthood and the road that leads the hell out of Independence, Iowa.
The little world of women created here by Blessing, director Lisa Foster, and the well chosen Paradox Players cast is one of warmth, humor and jousting for personal space.
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