Trifles

   This one-act drama by Susan Glaspell opened on 8 August 1916 at the Wharf Theatre, the little theatre used by the Prov-incetown Players on Cape Cod, after which the Washington Square Players produced it at the Comedy Theatre, where it opened on 30 August 1916. Based upon an actual case that Glaspell covered as a young reporter in Iowa, the tightly crafted play remains a perennial favorite. Two women explore small pieces of domestic evidence to discover that the absent woman must have murdered her abusive husband. The local authorities, all men, are unable to recognize clues among typical household items, nor are they able to decipher the emotional complexities of women's lives. The turning point comes when the law-and-order-respecting sheriff's wife decides not to reveal to her husband what the women have discovered. Trifles was briefly revived by the Manhattan Little Theatre Club in 1928.