MainstreetMusicals.org

SYNOPSIS

Prologue -- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1925. SOCIETY gathers for the unveiling of a newly acquired American Impressionist painting, “Woman at Rest.” SOCIETY is stunned by the resemblance of the beautiful subject to someone they once knew – LILY BART.

1905 -- LILY BART lives off of a small income from her parents’ estates and the occasional generosity of a wealthy aunt and her society friends. Lily is determined to marry a rich man in order to maintain the lifestyle of high society. However, her encounters with the handsome lawyer LAWRENCE SELDEN cause her to question her ambitions. Although Lily is in love with Selden, he is not rich enough for her. Respecting her desires, Selden keeps his distance.

As LILY continues to negotiate her way through SOCIETY, she encounters criticism and jealousy from the Society Women and unwanted advances from the Society Men. Lily is accused of having affairs with married men for their money. Eventually each of her friends rejects her, cutting her out of her former circle.

LILY continues on a downward spiral from high society. Unaccustomed to manual labor and the stress of poverty, she begins taking chloral to help her sleep. Her only chance of rejoining Society is to resort to blackmail, but she refuses to hurt SELDEN and burns the letters that could save her. Lily decides to reveal her true feelings to Selden, but after finishing a bottle of chloral, she sinks into a deep and final sleep, re-establishing the living portrait of “Woman at Rest.”

Epilogue -- One MAN is left in the gallery. While viewing the portrait, an older SELDEN has just re-lived the last year of Lily’s life.

NOTES

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