The Old Settler
by John Henry Redwood

Name: The Old Settler
Brand: John Henry Redwood
SKU: 9780822216421
Rating: 3.84 (25 reviews)

Off-Broadway

The Old Settler Book Cover — The Old Settler Cover

Highlights

Small Cast

Female

Male

120 mins1950sRole(s) for Black Actor(s)Interior SetPeriod CostumesAmerican Comedy

What readers are saying

Readers appreciate the heartfelt story of loneliness and sisterhood in the play. Many find the performance to be powerful and moving, drawing them in to explore the narrative further.

Touching and lovely storyPowerful productionEngaging themes of lonelinessSome found it hard to connect initially.

Synopsis

THE STORY: In World War II Harlem, New York, a fifty-five-year-old spinster (or as they were called in those days--an Old Settler), Elizabeth Borny, takes in a young male roomer, Husband Witherspoon, to help her with the rent.

Husband has come to Ha

Press Reviews

"Good naturalism does more than reproduce: it listens with passion and humor, and it shapes what it hears into powerful form… The Old Settler by John Henry Redwood presents the lives of two fiftyish sisters; Mr. Redwood has said he modeled these sisters on his mother and aunt. It’s a lovely play, moving in its pretty unsurprising central anecdote and more moving in its densely textured picture of Harlem life in 1943."
— Wall Street Journal

"A play that chooses to remember the good without the bad, being about the relationship of two aging, church-going sisters… and what happens when a handsome young fellow, newly arrived from the deep South, rents a room in the apartment they share… For all of its decent sentiments, The Old Settler avoids sentimentality. It has the authenticity and lack of pretense of an Early American sampler."
— The New York Times

"There is more humanity and truth here than in many plays superficially far more fancy… Redwood writes with telling conviction. His command of time, place and character is itself impeccable. We’ve had some fine plays off-Broadway this season, and this is one of the best. With all its sentiment, and its heart so pointedly in the right place, it still skillfully avoids heartless sentimentality, making it very much worth seeing."
— New York Post

Characters

Character	Gender	Age	Description
Quilly Mcgrath Black woman, 53. Elizabeth’s sister.	female	—	Black woman, 53. Elizabeth’s sister.
Husband Witherspoon Black man, 29. Elizabeth’s tenant.	—	—	Black man, 29. Elizabeth’s tenant.
Lou Bessie Preston Black woman, 29. Husband’s love interest.	female	—	Black woman, 29. Husband’s love interest.
Elizabeth “Bess” Borny Black woman, 55.	female	—	Black woman, 55.