On Wednesday evening March 30, all theaters on Broadway dimmed their lights in memory of Lanford Wilson who died last week. Though most of the media covered his passing, it was in mention and not as the major event it was when playwrights like Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams died. Which is right. Lanford Wilson was not a great playwright. He was, however, a very important playwright who represented an era. His career is not likely to be repeated anytime soon. His best known play is "Talley's Folly" a nice, sweet two-hander that won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Ironically, though chronologically it is the first play of his "Talley Trilogy" it was written second. In "Fifth of July" (which I think is his most important play) there is an eccentric aunt who is trying to decide what to do with her husband's ashes. The character, was so endearing and her love for her dead husband so sincere and enduring, Wilson decided to write a play about how they first met. So came about "Talley's Folly," a play that 31 years after it premiered is produced regularly. Actually, I wouldn't argue with someone who preferred Wilson's "Hot L Baltimore." The title refers to a run down hotel in which the e burned out of the hotel in it's sign and has never been replaced. Interestingly, after the play became a hit, hotels around the country were claiming to be the hotel that served as the playwright's inspiration. Imagine, claiming you were the dump that inspired someone to create a play about people who live in a seedy hotel. Cancel my reservation. Last summer Williamstown Theatre Festival produced "Fifth of July." The material seemed dated, which it is. But, to me, that is the critical element in Wilson's work - it is of the time it was written. If you want to clearly see the way the 1970s and 80s really were, read or see a play written by Lanford Wilson. He understood the time in which he lived and had the clarity of vision that all artists must have. His gift was the way he was able to articulate the voices of the people who lived in his world and this time. Wilson started writing Off-Off-Broadway at Cafe Cino in Greenwich Village in NYC and he populated his plays with the disenfranchised of society. The anonymous people who lived lives of daily desperation. Because he learned his craft in such an environment his language was as thrifty as were his sets. I think of him and those like Sam Shepard who came to the theater at the same time as the theater version of the Ash Can Painters. They created a style that is now called "lyric realism" as they found integrity and depth in those others dismissed or ignored. Perhaps the most important thing Wilson did in his life was, along with his director Marshall Mason and actress Tanya Barezin, formed the theater company known as Circle Repertory. Circle Rep was an actor driven theater that gave a theatrical home to many people who would later become household names. Jeff Daniels is the most enduring. It was this area's good fortune that Circle Rep was in residence for (I think) three seasons at the Little Theatre at SPAC from about 1980-83. There, Wilson premiered a couple of his plays - Angel's Fall" and "Talley and Son" (renamed A Tale Told"). Wilson wrote 17 full-length plays and 30 one-acts (most of the one acts at Cafe Cino). Few people could name three of his plays but would be familiar with many of the titles. That suggests his plays are remembered for themselves - not for who wrote them. I said earlier, his career might not be repeated anytime soon. That's because Wilson was not a writer of great plays and today it is tough to be produced without having written a great play. Too, he wrote for a company that was as interested as much for creating good material as it was producing a box office sensation. If there is another Lanford Wilson out there it might be Tracy Lett's who has Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre willing to produce his next play, no matter the fate of his last play. Lanford Wilson a good writer who wrote good plays. To judge the career of Lanford Wilson you must look at his body of work - not his individual plays. When you do that, you'll understand why Broadway paid tribute to him by dimming their lights on Wednesday.