The Sisters Rosensweig

Act One

Late Friday morning, Tess Goode is lounging in the sitting room of an elegantly decorated house in Queen Anne’s Gate, London. She is listening to a recording of her mother’s college a cappella group while speaking into a tape recorder herself. She is working on a final senior project for school, a type of documentation and analysis of her family’s younger years. In a flurry of activity, Pfeni Rosensweig enters, laden with shopping bags for luggage. Tess greets her aunt as her mother, Sara Goode, enters. It is Sara’s 54th birthday, and she is hosting a dinner party that night. It is clear right away that Sara, the oldest Rosensweig sister, is snobbish and believes London to be better than anything the United States might have to offer. She is the manager of the worldwide Hong Kong/Shanghai Bank, has been on the cover of Fortune magazine twice, and wants the absolute best in life.

Tess explains her school project, and Pfeni speaks of the Rosensweig sisters’ childhood in New