Setting

The setting is in the early summer of 1956 and takes place in Harrison, Texas. (Southern Texas town, 50 miles southwest of Houston and 40 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...

)

Synopsis

The Day Emily Married finds a newlywed couple moving into the house of the second-time bride's parents. The title character soon finds herself caught between her seemingly-ideal husband and her family.

Casts

The play premiered at the Silver Spring Stage in Silver Spring

Silver Spring, Maryland

Silver Spring is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It had a population of 71,452 at the 2010 census, making it the fourth most populous place in Maryland, after Baltimore, Columbia, and Germantown.The urbanized, oldest, and...

, Maryland

Maryland

Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...

 in May/June of 1997. It was directed by Jack Sbarbori and the cast included Eugenia Sorgnit (Sadie), Gay Hill (Lyd Davis "Belle"), Stephanie Mumford (Emily), Bob Justis (Richard Murray), Sunday Wynkoop (Addie), Rob Peters (Lee Davis), Elizabeth Lawrence (Lucy Fay), Patty Richmond (Alma Nash), and Marilyn Osterman (Maud Barker).

The show would kick off Primary Stages 20th anniversary season in 2005. It would be directed by Michael Wilson

Michael Wilson (director)

Michael Wilson , currently serving as artistic director at Hartford Stage, is an American stage director working extensively in regional theatre, Broadway, and Off-Broadway....

, set design by Jeff Cowie, costume design by David C. Woolard, lighting design by Rui Rita, and sound design by Andre Pluess. It starred Estelle Parsons

Estelle Parsons

Estelle Margaret Parsons is an American theatre, film and television actress and occasional theatrical director.After studying law, Parsons became a singer before deciding to pursue a career in acting. She worked for the television program Today and made her stage debut in 1961...

 (Lyd Davis "Belle"), Hallie Foote

Hallie Foote

Hallie Foote is an American actress.Born Barbarie Hallie Foote in New York City, the daughter of Lillian Vallish Foote and writer and director Horton Foote, she was raised in Nyack, New York and New Hampshire...

 (Emily), Biff McGuire

Biff McGuire

William "Biff" McGuire is an American actor. In recent years he has used the name William Biff McGuire professionally....

 (Lee Davis), James Colby (Richard Murray), Terri Keane (Alma Nash), Delores Mitchell (Addie), and Pamela Payton-Wright

Pamela Payton-Wright

-Biography:Payton-Wright was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Eleanor Ruth and Gordon Edgar Payton-Wright. She graduated from the Birmingham-Southern College in 1963. She began her television career in 1972 as Rhonda on Corky...

 (Maud Cleveland).

Reviews

CurtainUp's Elyse Sommer said, "The pleasure of The Day Emily Married comes from the unobtrusive excellence Foote still extracts from that bone and what the actors do with the roles he's written for them." New York Times' Ben Brantley

Ben Brantley

Benjamin D. "Ben" Brantley is an American journalist and the chief theater critic of The New York Times.-Life and career:...

said, "Even at its most forced, The Day Emily Married emanates an infectious, eerily familiar melancholy that keeps pricking at the memory like a wandering melody. I can think of no other playwright who is as harsh in his sentimentality as Mr. Foote is. His plays may radiate the burnished nostalgia of sepia-tone photographs, but he insists on your feeling that there is more ice than fire in their glow."