The Flutter of the Goldleaf, and Other Plays

In this haunting early 20th-century drama, a young scientist named Philo Warner toils in his attic laboratory, consumed by theories and inventions that have begun to swallow him whole. His parents, Hiram and Mary Ann, watch helplessly as their brilliant son slips away from them, not into the distant future his genius promises, but into something darker and more unknowable. When doctors are summoned to evaluate Philo, the family faces an unbearable question: is the son they raised still present behind those obsessive eyes, or has his own mind become a country no one can reach? Dargan writes with fierce compassion about the particular horror of loving someone whose brilliance has become indistinguishable from their destruction. The play captures a moment when psychology was still finding its language, when families faced mental illness with little but fear and faith. This is tragedy in its purest form, not the tragedy of villains, but of ordinary people caught in a catastrophe no one chose.