Rose Jewel and Harmony (Exchange for the Performing Arts, 1986)

Rose Jewel, a flamboyant but lonely widow, resents daughter Ann who, for her part, can’t even speak to her mother because of a terrible stammer she develops in her presence. Granddaughter Jennifer, pregnant at 13, is sullen and sarcastic to Rose Jewel. Add next-door neighbor George, a polio victim who writes romance novels and watches talk shows to discover “human truths” and you have a quirky group of characters worthy of Robert Altman or Alan Rudolph. Like those iconoclastic directors, Locke has a unique view of the secret frustrations that lie within us all. The playwright’s method of uncovering such emotions, drama laced with an off-kilter sense of humor, effectively illustrates the loneliness and desperation that dominate many lives.

Peninsula Weekly News

...a taut drama about people with handicaps of all sorts and the ways they’ve learned to live with and accommodate them. Humor is pervasive. All of Locke’s characters are etched from human tragedy where humor is the key to survival and courage is their special endowment.

San Mateo Times

Playwright Locke draws a good measure of the humor in his not-quite-black comedy from pain, and there are some good low-down and dirty four-letter laughs.

Sacramento Bee

Rose Jewel and Harmony is a piece I began while I was teaching a class in scriptwriting for UCLA Extension. It seemed I should set a good example for the students and work along with them, sharing my work with them as they shared theirs with me. Actually, it was a good plan and set a good tone for the class. Everyone felt they must work as hard as the prof.

Here are the brilliant Shirley O’Key as the vain and lifted sexy sexagenarian Rose Jewel, Dennis Curry as the ever-philosophical George and Damara Moore as the pesky pregnant 13-year-old granddaughter Jennifer.

I am always very proud when my work, brought to life by such wonderful artists helping to create my characters, is the vehicle for those artists’ receiving awards. Shirley O’Key was honored as Best Actress in a Drama by the Sacramento Area Regional Theatre Alliance, Dennis Curry was nominated as Best Actor in a Drama, and I was nominated as Best Director of a Drama. Rose Jewel and Harmony was named Best Original Script and Best Performance of an Original Script.

Here are Joyce Luzader as Rose Jewel, Valerie Clear as the straight-talking, pregnant thirteen-year-old Jennifer, and Carolyn Gregory as Ann, the daughter caught in between. Hillbarn Theatre, Foster City, 1992.

Many of my characters appear in other books and plays at other ages. Rose Jewel first appeared in the novel Tracks, and later I resurrected her in On Daddy’s Birthday. (Well, really only her name and relationship to her sisters, because her character changes considerably between the two plays.)

More photos from On Daddy’s Birthday portraying the young Rose Jewel and the Starr girls in 1934 Oklahoma, also of the women the girls were to become in 1984 Hollywood.

March, 2015: Oh, I've decided to put all my plays in their entirety on my website, getting so close now to calling the whole thing quits yet really hoping that somebody will finally discover what a huge talent has been neglected for so many years. I went back to search for the complete script of Rose Jewel and Harmony through all those 3/5 floppies from my old Mac only to find bits and pieces that I mostly had to actually retype. And what fun that was, really. I love these characters, and I love the things they say and think and don't say and can't possibly think. So here I am now, sharing all of this with all of you (out there, whoever and wherever you are, and whenever comes into the question also.)

Copyright © 2004 Robert Locke
All Rights Reserved