An Asylum of Sorts takes place during the summer of 1977 in a wealthy suburb of Manhattan, a town with old names and old estates. One of these old estates is owned by Rodney Luger, an investment banker, who has seen better days as he tries to live in his Ivy League past. With the stock market experiencing a lackluster period the recently divorced Rodney decides to rent rooms out in his large Victorian home. The people who come to stay at the Lugers’ live in their own worlds both very different from each other and different from Rodney’s. These worlds start to collide in both humorous and frightening ways reminiscent of a cross between Arsenic and Old Lace and Catcher in the Rye. Carter, the first tenant, is a WWII vet who charges through the house a great deal dressed in tennis whites and armed with Johnny Walker Red as he sees Japanese soldiers around every corner. Alice, who moves in shortly afterwards, is both frightening and sexually demonic, and she discovers a secret hidden within the local Episcopal church, a secret which is over 120 years old. Added to this mix is Rodney’s younger brother Jake who moves into a third floor bedroom with his girlfriend Kate and their 150 pound Newfoundland Oliver. Jake is a budding journalist and Kate is heading into graduate studies in psychology after finishing up at Sarah Lawrence. Oliver is a chow hound who understands people. When Rodney’s two prep-school age sons return home from Cape Cod that summer things start to heat up. The upper class society of this town has never seen the likes of the chemistry created by all of these characters as they rattle the world of the country club and its inhabitants along the way. It is the summer of fear of the Son of Sam and a major blackout in New York City just over the hill from the Lugers’. It is a summer none of them will ever forget. There is a mystery behind the characters and, in many ways, only Oliver can see through it all until the end.
