Jenny Keeps Talking

by Richard Greenberg

In three monologues, one actress plays three women. First we meet Jenny, an established left-wing columnist whose newspaper is in the throes of a takeover. No thanks to her editor, with whom Jenny used to sleep and who promised he'd be able to save her job, she's tossed out after fourteen years of service. No longer considering herself young enough to start life over, she reluctantly calls upon the charity of her grandmother who lets her stay at a leaky family cottage on a forgotten island off the coast of Maine. There she meets an (at first) overly friendly handyman whom by the play's end we find out isn't so bad after all. She also gets angry enough about the way she's been treated to write a book of essays, which ultimately sweeps her back onto the national scene and then some. In the second monologue, we meet Jenny's ne'er-do-well sister, Claudia, an Upper West Side bohemian and failed opera singer whose life has been a string of get-rich-quick schemes and disastrous sublets (both in terms of real estate and relationships). "My future," she says, "is in breakfast" meaning she intends to open a breakfast-only restaurant in Jenny's cottage. This starts a series of answering machine arguments between Claudia and her sister as they vie for Jenny's home and expose past wounds that have never healed between them. By the end of Claudia's scene she too gets tossed out of her familiar surroundings when the landlord finds out she's been renting illegally. In the play's last scene, the women's grandmother recounts how she's secretly saved up enough money to take care of both her granddaughters, if only they could do something she respected. The doorbell rings, and all three are about to gettogether for a bumpy evening of settling their scores.

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Richard Greenberg was an American playwright and television writer known for his subversively humorous depictions of middle-class American life. He had more than 25 plays premiere on Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway in New York City and eight at the South Coast Repertory Theatre in Costa Mesa, California, including The Violet Hour, Everett Beekin, and Hurrah at Last. Greenberg is perhaps best known for his 2002 play Take Me Out.