GREENE – On Monday, July 25, “Ivy Rowe,” the play adapted and performed over 800 times nationally by Barbara Bates Smith from the novel ”Fair and Tender Ladies,” will be presented by Chenango River Theatre at 7:30 p.m. Musical accompaniment is by Jeff Sebens. This show is the first of a new series of one night performances featuring guest artists at the area’s fully professional, non-profit theatre company.

Noted for her Off-Broadway performance of “Ivy Rowe,” recounting the passionate life of a spunky mountain woman, Barbara’s 20-year touring of this one-person show has included the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The Village Voice said of the New York production: “A lifetime’s worth of sass, whoop, hurt, and reflection.” WOR Radio commented: “We are captivated and enthralled” and Variety simply said: “Both funny and heartbreaking.”

Ivy Rowe, the feisty born-with-the-century mountain woman is probably Lee Smith’s most beloved character, drawn from her most beloved book (Lee knows of at least 11 babies who have been named Ivy). In this stage version, Ivy takes us, in a flashback, through a lifetime of letters depicting her passionate life of “livin’ on love.” With a penchant for storytelling, she paints a vivid picture of twentieth-century Appalachian revivals, mine disasters, rural electrification, the Depression, two world wars and Vietnam. We relish her stand against the coal company’s bulldozer, defending her home place.