Years before the careers and suicides that would cement their legacies in literary history, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton were classmates and rivals who spent long, gin-soaked afternoons debating sex, death, and poetry over cigarettes and dry liquor. Set in the spring of 1959, against the sumptuous decor of the Boston Ritz Carlton, So It Has Come To This is a morbid comedy about love and ambition in a world running out of time.
Synopsis
In 1963, Sylvia Plath published The Bell Jar—a semi-autobiographical novel known for its unflinching descriptions of sexual assault, family trauma, suicide attempts, hospitalization, and uncertain recovery. The same year it was released, Plath sealed her kitchen, turned on her oven, and killed herself at the age of thirty.
In 1966, Anne Sexton published her Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of poems, Live or Die, about her troubled relationships with her mother and daughters, mental illness, and suicidal ideation. The collection includes the poem, Sylvia’s Death—an envious, heart-broken ode to her late friend. Eight years later, Anne donned her mother’s coat, sealed herself in her garage, turned on the engine of her convertible, and killed herself at the age of forty-five.
Much has been written of these artists’ torrid loves and tragic ends. But before they were canon, they were classmates, competitors, and friends. Told in three, rapid-fire acts over one boozy night, So It Has Come To This leans into anachronism and breaks the fourth wall, subverting the classic biopic genre to tell a character-driven story of two best friends testing the limits of their relationship before they part ways forever. Darkness looms over the evening—a clock running out, both on their evening and on their lives—but the tone of this short is stylized, sensual, fast, and funny. Sylvia and Anne are glamorous, young, and eager to burn away the shadows, especially tonight, which – unbeknownst to either—will be the last time they see each other alive.
