The Sexton
by Don Nigro

In this compact full length, Nigro returns to his favorite territory, the bloodstained hilly country of east Ohio, to tell the story of an odd young man named Frank Roosevelt, an orphan who comes to Armitage, Ohio to find his mother.

He's befriended there by the local priest, Father Wiggley, and given the job of taking care of the church cemetery.

But the private and inarticulate Frank turns out not to be the simple minded innocent that Father Wiggley has first thought he is.

Frank beats him at chess and then begins spending far too much time with Annabella Tosca, Father Wiggley's very young and attractive new housekeeper.

As Father Wiggley's concern grows, the ghostlike Lilias Walesiak wanders the cemetery at night, looking in the windows of the rectory while her sister Sadie Prikosovits tries to cover up long buried secrets that threaten to bring Father Wiggley's world crashing down around him.

This is a funny, eerie, mysterious, and powerful investigation of repressed emotion, sin, and the possibility of redemption, told in a fluid back and forth tapestry that builds to a powerful and shocking climax.

In The Sexton & Other Plays.