The Heart Outright

Part owner and manager of a movie house in Austin, Texas, which has recently begun to show porno films, he recounts, in an engrossing and revealing monologue, the events of his present life

His numbing, sometimes disquieting duties as concessionaire and general factotum in the cinema; his involvement with a local religious cult; and the still lingering doubts about his manhood which have remained with him ever since, eight years earlier, he had found himself thrust, almost accidentally, into the role of a hero

The second act, subtitled Terminal, takes place four years later, when Stephen returns to his former home in New Mexico to attend his mother's funeral. There he encounters people from his past: his former sweetheart, Angel, once a waitress in the diner where the events of the first play took place

And his avaricious, brutal stepfather, Ray, who tries to browbeat him into signing over half of his late mother's property; and a former high school classmate, Dickie, now the night manager of the local bus terminal, who still carries around a newspaper account of Stephen's bravery and secretly wants to challenge him

In the ensuing confrontations, each of these characters reveals more about himself, or herself, than each might have wished, but each in his own way also comes to terms with what he or she has become in the years since the fateful night of terror when the legend of Stephen "Red" Ryder first came into being

A sequel to this author's renowned success When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? Uniquely constructed, the play is comprised of two related acts, either of which can be presented effectively by itself

"Like the original play, the sequel is a psychological melodrama in which Stephen's fighting spirit is severely tested and found wanting" ~ NY Times

" constantly engrossing Medoff gives their dialogue an idiosyncratic eloquence" ~ BackStage