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<\/a>Richard Scharine as Wallace Stegner<\/p><\/div>\n
WALLACE comprises two solo plays about Salt Lake City\u2019s hometown boy, Wallace Stegner (1909-93), and its homeboy (if we only knew it), Wallace Thurman (1902-34).<\/p>\n
Though Thurman was born here and Stegner in Iowa, both were connected to Utah (even attending the U of U) and both were named Wallace. That was good enough for director Jerry Rapier of Plan-B Theatre Company to \u201cbraid\u201d the plays by Jenifer Nii and Debora Threedy.<\/p>\n
Surprisingly, given two such dissimilar souls, it works superbly.<\/p>\n
Stegner, the environmentalist, novelist and short-story writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1972, opens the play wearing a sweater with something resembling the Calumet baking powder Indian knit around it. He lived happily, one might believe from this play blissfully, with wife Mary and ultimately retired to southern Utah. \u201cThe endless green of Iowa offended me. I was used to earth tones,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Thurman, a novelist during the Harlem Renaissance (think Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston), says that Salt Lake City \u201chad an angel on every corner and a devil on every inbound train.\u201d He wears a sharp suit throughout; his wife Louise would ultimately sue him for every penny he never made for his hedonistic lifestyle. He died at 32 at a New York City hospital on Welfare Island.<\/p>\n