Windows

During the first decade of the 20th Century, John Galsworthy was widely regarded as one of England’s leading writers, as both a novelist and playwright and the winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize for Literature. Yet he is rarely produced in the United States today. Galsworthy built his reputation by dealing regularly with the unequal division of wealth and the unfair treatment of poor people, and in Windows he examines that issue once again. Written in 1922, Windows is subtitled A Comedy in Three Acts for Idealists and Others. The play takes us inside the home of Geoffrey and Joan March, an idealistic and liberal middle-class couple living with their young daughter and World War I-veteran son. Their home, lives and even their cultural viewpoints are turned upside down when they hire a new maid, recently released from prison for a highly publicized and scandalous crime, who possesses many secrets.