Mother (at 20 years old): "When did I die?" 

Daughter (at 30 years old): "None of your business."

In Hugh Leonard's tender comedy/drama Love in The Title—built on a conceit where characters interact while occupying three time periods simultaneously—such teasing exchanges track the mysterious, subliminal connections among three generations of Irish women. Catnip for theater lovers.

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Products of their own times and their own lives, each character is distinctly drawn--Cat, uninhibited and free-spirited, unknowing, and untouched by future troubles; Triona, who's grudgingly adapted the middlebrow, proper standards of a Dublin matron (that still haven't evaporated her eviscerating wit), and Katie, the single, successful writer and scholar, who has learned how to navigate a 21st century life. Yet… She's the only one who knows the future of her mother and grandmother. Will she tell? And what does she want to learn from them? Secrets and stories—how do we get to be who we are?

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Katie (50, contemporary): Mam, I promise you, you'll see the day when there's an end to all the old sins-of-the-father guff.  A day when a husband is no more necessary to a woman than the bell on that bike.

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Triona (30, Katie's mother, from 1964): You have friends? That's a pathetic thing to say. You don't know it yet, do you? Getting married is so you won't need friends.

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Cat (20, Triona's mother, Katie's gran, from 1932): Charlie Tynan hasn't two ha'pennies to rub together, but he says he'll make me a necklace out of the sparkles of the sun on the water at Castleconnell. I like that. A fellow that promises you what can't be got will never disappoint you.