[Talley's Folly] is a duologue between Matt and Sally, from sundown through moonrise and thence to the start of three decades of married happiness…. Matt and Sally can play out their duet of pursuit and evasion, hopefulness and disillusion, until revelations of their pasts to each other bring better understanding, absolution through mutual compassion, and final tremulous affirmation of love. It is a curious love that slowly emerges from a protective husk of banter, teasing, even pugnacity. Once out, however, it can match the moon in its zenith—hold its own even under the coming scrutiny of long sunlight.

Gradually, with the double assurance of a master of psychology and dramaturgy, Wilson unfolds not so much a series of events as a conversation that will last two joint life-times…. Wilson has written some of the most tender, wisely funny, chargedly understated dialogue I have heard from a stage...