by Audrey Cefaly
QTC Archives: 2015 – 2016 Season
October 2 – November 1, 2015
Set in the small fictional town of Lenoraville, Alabama, Maytag Virgin tells the story of recently widowed Elizabeth Nash and her new next door neighbor, Jack Key. Lizzy grieves outwardly over the recent death of her husband, but her inner world is filled with deep regret and secret longing. Jack’s life, with its own tragic underpinnings, is one of loneliness and solitary contemplation. He is an observer and he sees something in Lizzy that he cannot ignore, something at once achingly alive and profoundly unmovable. Maytag Virgin attempts to explore the bridge between loss and redemption, between enlightened selfawareness and reckless apathy. When the only lasting change comes from total reclamation, what must we jettison to stay afloat? Whom must we hurt… and how much? What was built must be leveled. What seems lost is not. Who we were, we are no longer. Every one of us is broken. And every one of us can be whole again.
Written and directed by Audrey Cefaly.
Featuring Gillian Shelly and William Hardy
BWW Reviews: Heart-warming ‘MAYTAG VIRGIN’ at Quotidian Theatre
Andrew White, Broadway World – Read the Review
Quotidian Theatre Company kicks off its 2016 season, and its participation in the Washington, DC Women’s Voices Theater Festival, with the beautiful world premiere of playwright Audrey Cefaly’s newest work, Maytag Virgin.
Natalie Rine, DC Metro Theater Arts – Read the Review
Ultimately, Maytag Virgin is a witty and earnest meditation on how people connect even when they feel they’re not ready, and what it is to move on while honoring and remembering the things, and people, who came before.
Jennifer Clements, DC Theatre Scene – Read the Review
Her writing is poetic at times, but very real always. Cefaly’s characters speak like everyday people but are nonetheless compelling, as they struggle to overcome the heartache of the past with courage they didn’t know they have.
Barbara Trainin Blank, MD Theatre Guide – Read the Review
The smartest thing you can ever learn is that you don’t have all the answers. Not to life, not to death, not to love. In a strikingly beautiful and evocative world premier work, playwright Audrey Cefaly debuts her new play Maytag Virgin at Quotidian Theatre Company as a part of the Women’s Voices Theater Festival. Directed by Cefaly, this two-person heartwarming tale explores how fragile human life can be, and how even among the shattered debris of ruined life true beauty can be found. A startlingly emotional journey wherein Cefaly takes the mundane and makes it marvelous, wherein the banal becomes beautiful, this play is a radiant gem of light into the ordinary struggles of love, loss, and life.
Amanda N. Gunther, Theatre Bloom – Read the Review
Audrey Cefaly has penned an old-fashioned slow-burn romance in “Maytag Virgin.”
Nelson Pressley, The Washington Post – Read the Review
