Women Must Weep & Women Must Work

Waiting hopefully for the good news of victories which will never be, a group of ladies meets at the Maryland home of Mrs Agatha Lindsey to roll bandages for the Southern wounded

With Mrs Lindsey, whose son Dick is serving under General Longstreet, are her daughter-in-law, Jane, and Mrs Carter, a northern-born lady whose sympathies are held in question by the others

Mrs Carter is also an outspoken individualist, a divorcee and, according to local gossip, the lover of the absent Dick Lindsey. As the women proceed with their work the tension between Jane Lindsey and her supposed rival mounts

Then news arrives from the front - a list of casualties from the crucial battle at Gettysburg. Dick Lindsey's name is among those who will not return. Numbed by the shock of this disclosure Mrs Carter admits that while she did indeed love Dick her feelings were never reciprocated, and Jane is given the consolation of knowing that the husband she lost was true to her

As the two women comfort each other we sense not only a personal reconciliation but also a hint of the greater reunification which time and the national spirit will eventually effect (F7)

An absorbing study of the women left behind by fathers, husbands and sons who have gone off to fight in the Civil War

Women Must Work ~ Marcella Manners has built her fashion business into one of the most successful and exclusive in New York. But, as the play begins, she is distressed by a recurring series of robberies, all committed in such a way that only an "insider" could be responsible

To avoid unwanted publicity Miss Manners engages a private detective, Kitty Hawke, to track down the culprit. Posing as an efficiency expert Kitty circulates throughout the store, and eventually narrows her surveillance down to two young models, Betty McCleary and Eileen Stuart

Then Betty is caught red-handed with a supposedly stolen dress. But, as the audience is already aware, the real thief is still at large - Miss Manners' trusted, long-time associate and friend, Audrey Ames

In a final, dramatic confrontation, Audrey, breaking down, admits that years of accumulated jealousy and frustration had led her to act as she did. As the play ends all are sadder but wiser and, to ease the course of true love, Betty is allowed to borrow the dress which, only moments before, had induced such doubts of her own honesty (11)

A tense and dramatic situation involving a group of modern "career girls" in the world of high fashion, and the crisis caused by the discovery that one among them is a thief