The Woolgatherer

by William Mastrosimone

Drama

Characters: 1 male, 1 female

Interior Set

Rose, a shy dimestore salesgirl whose life centers around reveries and daydreams, lives in a dreary Philadelphia apartment. Into her life saunters Cliff, a hard working, hard drinking truck driver. He is rough and witty and just as starved for love as she is. Produced to great success at New York's Circle Repertory, this delicate two-character drama starred Peter Weller and Patricia Wettig. The Woolgatherer features several excellent monologues.

"Energy, compassion and theatrical sense are there."-The New York Times

"[Mastrosimone] has a knack for composing wildly humorous lines at the same time that he is able to penetrate people's hearts and dreams."-Hollywood Reporter

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Drama, Fiction

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Pepper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This play has a fantastic monologue for actresses! "The Birds" is my go to monologue for auditions or performing in classes, as it is full of layers and has great emotional movement which allows you to showcase your skills and talent to the audience.

[Laura Floyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a crane in this play. Crane like the bird. Yeah... I know the script doesn't call for one. It was a college production, what can I say? In any case, I think it is a very sad story, well worth the read (or the see, if you can).

[Rose-Emma Lambridis · Rating 5 out of 5]

will always love it forget the haters!!

[Davin Broadhurst · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic dialogue and monologues. Great story about two damaged people—Cliff is a bit of an alcoholic, maybe a bit bipolar and Rose seems normal up until the audience starts to piece together that she is losing her grip on reality a bit. Possibly dissociative identity disorder. Cliffs long drive monologue in the middle is fantastic.

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was intensely awesome! The dialogue is masterfully written and the themes it touches on throughout the play are very heavy topics handled well. I’m so glad I came across this play. Highly recommend.

[Courtney Ravelo · Rating 3 out of 5]

This play has funny and clever dialogue but the male protagonist was occasionally violent towards the female protagonist which turned me off from the story as a whole. It also got confusing in act 2, almost like the writer lost the plot.

[Reagan · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5
I’m so confused

[Debbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can see why acting teachers and students like this (one big duet with some monologues), but the play is garbage.

[AR · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

The only underlining in the library copy of this play that I checked out is on Rose’s long bird monologue, and I feel like that sums things up better than I could.

[Mick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marvelous - a fascinating journey compressed into narrow time and space. Hoping I can find more of Mastrosimone's plays.

[Oliver Castro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Supongo que simplemente no me hizo click

[Bt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw a student theatre production of this at my college. The acting I saw wasn't particularly good, but I could actually feel the script saving the show a lot; you can more easily get away with mediocre acting when you've got good material (not that mediocre acting should ever be your goal). That being said, I thought the monologues were way too long and boring. The characters kept going on and on and on about the same things! Maybe if the acting had been better, it would have been fine, but I'm not sure. It was so bad I kind of zoned out... the monologues were just very long stories about things that happened in the past, and I didn't understand why the other character never broke in.

The story was interesting and kind of fun, though I didn't understand quite why the characters decided to do certain things (maybe that was the fault of the production I saw?). I thought the ending was EXTREMELY abrupt, and I was caught totally off guard when the lights went down. It seemed to me we hadn't reached any kind of real conclusion; they were just, like, right in the middle of a conversation! Also, I don't know what the playwright was trying to tell me about Rose's personality. I thought I mostly understood her, but the ending confused me. I think there was supposed to be some kind of revelation, but I didn't get it.

This play has a good mix of funny moments and serious ones. My favorite scene was at the beginning of Act II when he accuses her of having a man in the closet. She is hurt and repeatedly denies it, but he eventually throws her aside and opens the doors, only to find she was telling the truth.

Overall a good play - definitely has some good moments and two interesting characters (though is Rose too farfetched to be believable?)

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

How to sort through my thoughts...

I like the play. It confuses me. The structure of the meaning and the arc seem highly subjective. It thusly seems to me an excellent play to work on personalization with because of how it would seem to admit a great degree of diversity in how it might be realized.

It features a strong, gruff male and a sort of weak, flighty flower of a female. At first, I find these stock myths of male and femaleness off-putting. That was my first impression. How he keeps berating her seemingly with jokes that she obviously can't deal with. The need to connect reminds me of frankly and johhny. Something about the girl reminds me of glass menagerie. In fact, the characters have the same name: Rose.

As it proceeds... Things open up into less charted territory. I agree with another review I saw that at least the epic monologue he has in the middle: how does he continue weathering the requirement of need and action... How does he motivate it? And what is she doing all that time?

The end is heart warming and confusing and could end up meaning a bunch of different things, I think. Highly dependent on how it's staged, what is made of it, I assess...

I feel like it's an expression of faith, grace, and the mutual creation of meaning out of the desperate realities of chaotic life. How incredibly specific of me, eh?

[Paige · Rating 4 out of 5]

God, I have read this play so many times. I've never been one to read many plays for some reason, but this one struck me greatly. It was presented to me in high school by my drama teacher. She said it had the perfect monologue in it for me, and if she could ever do this play (which is impractical for a high school production) she would cast me. Too bad I have stage fright. But I was deeply flattered, because I love Rose. I'm not quite as...eccentric as she is. But I can understand her. For a play, she is a dynamic character. One that I would picture in a great novel. The crane scene twists my arm, breaks my soul, until I'm almost crying in pain. This is just a beautiful play.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

OK, so I remembered this play from all those acting class scenes people did and picked it up for $1 at the used book sale. Lame. These are two of the most underdeveloped characters I have ever seen. I don't care how long their monologues are. They bore me.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I spent the entire read waiting for the actual story to start, but it never seemed to.
A pair of good actors could make this entertaining, as some of the things Rose has to say are vaguely interesting, but the nonsense conversations were just too longwinded.

[J Crossley · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this play, Rose bring Cliff to her apartment. Cliff is a hard-working truck-driver who uses jokes to prevent opening himself to others. Rose is a quiet sales clerk who had a traumatic event happen to her. The push and pull between the two characters comprises the play.

[Christina Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite play of all time. Pure poetry. The words shape the characters, such a rarity.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a really good play. I liked it a lot.