PORT ANGELES — We don’t get to see how our parents were when they were young.
But if we knew more about the lives they had, we’d understand how they are today, believes Faye Sholiton, the playwright behind “V-E Day,” a family tale coming to the stage this Friday.
The play is about a mother, a daughter, a suitor and a friend during World War II.
On Friday, the 70th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day — when the Allied Forces accepted Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender — Readers Theatre Plus will present a single performance.
Lone performance
Curtain time for the staged reading is 7 p.m. Friday at the Mount Pleasant Grange Hall, 2432 Mount Pleasant Road, and admission will be by donation.
Proceeds will benefit the American Legion Riders Post 29 of Port Angeles, while more information can be found at www.ReadersTheatrePlus.com.
In the opening scene of “V-E Day,” we meet Evelyn (Karen Hogan), a 79-year-old widow who’s given a series of caregivers a pretty tough time.
Her daughter, Aimee, 52 (Brenda DeChant), is with her when she receives a surprise visit from her boyfriend of long ago.
Here it is, V-E Day 2003, and in walks Bernard (Stewart Harris) with a box full of the newsletters Evelyn edited during the war.
These were community newspapers, compiled to keep soldiers overseas in touch with hometown goings-on.
Evelyn — Evie back then — made these publications happen. They were her contribution to the war effort, her way of keeping morale up.
Bernard’s visit stirs Evelyn’s memory, and two ghosts appear: the young Evie (Leona Voss) and her sweetheart Bernie (Pat Owens, the play’s director).
We also meet Lil (Karla Messerschmidt-Morgan), Bernie’s sister and Evie’s close friend.
When war ended
“V-E Day” offers a clear view of the women’s lives: times when they held jobs and pursued interests that they gave up at war’s end.
When the men came home and went back to work, women like Evie, in great numbers, became homemakers.
Evie’s story is one of settling for a safe husband, a man who was “slow and steady,” as Sholiton put it.
Her freedom is replaced by frustration, which she takes out on her daughter, Aimee.
“V-E Day’s” Evie “is my mom and my aunt,” Hogan said, adding that the play gives her a chance to see them in a new way.
“This gives a very personal face, a personal heart, to the history,” added Messerschmidt-Morgan.
Sholiton, a prolific playwright who lives in a suburb of Cleveland, sought to write an intergenerational story.
“It really is about parents and their children,” she said, and the way the past is expressed in our parents’ behavior — and not so much in their words.
As it turns out, Readers Theatre Plus’ staging of “V-E Day” involves some real-life mothers and daughters.
While DeChant plays the adult Aimee, her own daughter, Kaylee Dunlap, 12, portrays Aimee as a girl.
And Messerschmidt-Morgan’s daughter, Gretchen, newly home from her U.S. Army deployment in Kuwait, will be coming to see the play Friday night.
Sholiton hailed Readers Theatre Plus for its 70th anniversary performance of her play.
“’V-E Day’ is so close to my heart,” she said.
“I was really thrilled that they wanted to do it.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
