Amazon Category:  Drama Publisher: Samuel French, Inc. ISBN-10:  057363016X Type: Fiction Pages: 112 Copyright: Sep 1 1978 The Year is 1919, and Liz Madden, a widow with four daughters, tries to hold her family together in a world she never made, while waiting for her only son to return from France. The Place is St.Louis, the time is 1919, and the people are an indomitable mother and her four daughters. The family is working class, respectable Irish, and they have moved from the farm to the city. One daughter is dying of consumption, one is unhappily married to a New York socialite, a third is a political activist, and the youngest wants to get married and move with her husband to California. Though the mother's children are flling away from her she is still the dominant force in the family, a firm believer in God and the Bible, possessed of a homespun sense of humor. Liz Madden has a dogged independence and the ability to survive in the face of adversity. But she is up against those forces of life and death that must tear her family apart. And as she faces this fact at the end, she reluctantly tells her God, "Lord, if you was a woman, you'd a-done it differnt."

Clive Barnes, The New York Times
Kevin O'Morrison's Ladyhouse Blues is a strangely atmospheric play, which at times has the haunting quality of Chekhov. The place is St. Louis - grassroots America - and the time is 1919. As the play unfolds the significance of 1919 becomes more and more apparent; this must have been one of the watershed years of American history ... Throughout the play we see hints of the new America to come. Everywhere there are suggestions of an America changing, of a society on the move ... In a remarkably unaffected way, Ladyhouse Blues appears to pinpoint just that evolving evolution ... The play is extremely moving and extraordinarily evocative ...

Walter Kerr, The New York Times
It's (Ladyhouse Blues) authenticity doesn't come from its mere marshalling of period trivia to let us know that we are in the early months of 1919, and that the mother and her four daughters who share chores and occasional songs, and blunt, hearty quarrels in the kitchen, are women without men ... The women come on like truth itself because of the sheer energy they pour into the fleeting, empty, often despairing days and nights ... In their vulnerabilities, all are strong ... Mr. O'Morrison has given themeverything in abundance: distinctive human voices, busy hands that belong to people, humor and despair as good companions, an aura of wistful poetry behind all that is so animated, so stubborn, so ignorant, so innocent. He is beyond question a playwright to be nourished and waited for.

Mel Gussow, The New York Times
Kevin O'Morrison's "Ladyhouse Blues" takes place in St. Louis in August, 1919, and the year is as important as the locale. The Maddens - a young widowed mother and her four daughters - are waiting for the various men in their lives to return from the war in France. As they converse in the family kitchen, sequestered against the heat of a scorching summer day, the demonstrate the solidarity of family. At the same time, we feel their world changing. The nation is in transition, not only emerging from a world war, but also moving into an age of industrialization and enlightenment. Houses are switching on to electricity, the labor movement is rising, and women are beginning to assert their independence. Mr. O'Morrison's play is a period piece that exactly captures a time, an environment and a mood. The mood is one of restless anxiety, a breaking with the past and an insecurity about the future. The Maddens are bound by tradition. Almost any action is seen as a rebellion, and any forthright move, such as an "unsuitable" marriage can seriously upset the equilibrium. The mother is every inch a matriarch,a woman weighted by her prejudices and buoyed by her sense of loyalty. Her list of bigotries is as long as a hot summer day, and they include most of her daughters' activities. Each of their choices colllides with her expectations. One marries a German-Amerian, another moves to New York and aquires a certain urban sophistication, and a third becomes an activist for women's rights. Despite their individual interests, each is wedded to the "ldyhouse", one fo a number of St. Loouis homes made temporarily manless by the war. The ladyhouse becomes a homestead - a bulwark. The women manage one another's lives. They are attached by heartstrings as well as blood ties. They are also united in their concern about the sole surviving son of the family, who is in the Navy. His letter from overseas, filled with small-mindedness along with filial devotion, completes the tapestry, weaving the women into closer concert. The play moves with the slowness of life - and at first it seems too slow. Having introduced the characters and confirmed their personalities, the playwright circles the situation until we are saturated with atmospheric detail. By the second act, having watched the women bake cornbread, wash laundry, light kerosene lamps and wilt I the heat, we realize that in "Ladyhouse," atmosphere is the essence.