When the World was Green (A Chef's Fable)
by Sam Shepard, Joseph Chaikin

THE STORY: A hauntingly lyrical memory play, WHEN THE WORLD WAS GREEN is steeped in the elliptical, poetic style for which Shepard is justly celebrated.

Sketched out in just a handful of scenes is a world of sensual delight, of great journeys to distant lands, and exotic food “piled as high as a mountain, glistening in the sun.”

But as always, the beauty of Shepard's landscape is only skin-deep.

Under the surface lies a family vendetta that has lasted for seven generations.

The play has only two characters, an old man who was once a superb chef and a young reporter who comes to interview him in the prison where he as been locked up for many years after poisoning a man he mistook for his cousin.

Their eight conversations are interspersed with a sequence of monologues in which both characters recall incidents from their childhood.

These link together to form a tender narrative of regret and loss through which they transcend their memories and reach mutual forgiveness and love.