Samuel French
Nicholas Kazan
Manya and Alan
Based on a true story. Manya, 19 and a college senior arrives with her sole surviving family (Uncle Gregory) at the swank New York apartment of Gregory’s gangster friend Alan who is immediately attracted to Manya, and she’s intrigued by him: an older man who’s suave, cynical and charismatic. After a respectible interval, Gregory leaves. Alone with her, Alan cajoles Manya into revealing herself and then attacks her, first destroying her innocence and then raping her. A year later, Manya now in medical school, invites Alan to dinner and flirts with him, seemingly toying with the idea of “resuming the affair” when Gregory arrives. Manya tells Gregory about the rape. He is shocked. She attacks him for his complicity: leaving an innocent girl alone with such a man. Then they sit down to an elaborate meal and Manya reveals the horrors she has undergone in the intervening year: catonia, pregnancy, madness, eventual realization of her condition, frustrated attempts to obtain a legal abortion and, finally, a self-induced abortion of a 6-month-old fetus. The tale is horrifying, cathartic and only a prelude to Manya’s final, shocking act of revenge
