Synopsis: Henry is a quietly desperate business-man, who's losing focus and contact with his wife, daughter, and son. His wife, Sally, seems already to have taken emotional and spiritual leave from her family. Henry becomes reminded of his artist-father, who wasn't very good as a painter and never made a living from his art. Worse, he didn't even try to support his family with other sources of income. Henry doesn't want that heritage passed on, but it's already too late.

Cast:
David Strathairn .... Henry
Elizabeth Webster .... Sally

Notes:
• The People's Light and Theatre production of Sally's Gone, She Left Her Name marked it premiere.
• David, a friend of playwright Russell Davis, has done stage readings of another Davis play entitled Sally's Porch.

Critical Praise & Commentary:
• "Strathairn, best known for his movie work with John Sayles, delivers a rich and subtle performance, zeroing in on the heartbeat of each repetition and inverted phrase." -Sam Adams, Philadelphia City Paper

• "The chief advance attraction was the fact that David Strathairn was playing the baffled husband and father. I'd just seen him as Duke Theseus in the film of Midsummer Night's Dream. He was anything but magisterial as Henry, a quietly desperate business-man, who's losing focus. And losing contact with his wife, daughter, and son." -Glenn Loney, New York Theatre Wire

(David On His Role:)
• [on the play] "You could say it's about a family's falling apart, but that would be a sad, tragic take on the play; it's about what happens when people begin to change in their lives... They're all on this precipice, and it's really quite wonderful how it affects them." -David Strathairn, 1999

• [on playwright Russell Davis] "(He works on) a different terrain, much as Pinter does. There's always something apparent outside the membrane of the immediate event on stage... One of the great challenges of doing his work, like Pinter's, is to give breadth to both--what's going on onstage and what he's evoking beyond the play, between illusion and reality--and you're not always sure where the line between them is." -David Strathairn, 1999

(Abigail Adams On David:)
• "He's masterful with subtext. He is very economical in his acting style, yet there's also a sense of oceans of feeling and thought under the surface, and that's what Russell's plays need." -Abigail Adams, director

Related Links:
People's Light and Theatre Company (off site)