Act One: Last Christmas. The Hopcroft Kitchen
Sidney Hopcroft is a young man on the make in the potentially lucrative real estate field. Jane, his wife, appears to suffer from that particular case of OCD involving keeping things clean. It is last Christmas and they are hosting a party. Both are highly agitated as they hope to make a strong positive impression on their guests, including two businessmen who are already perched on ladder steps high above Sidney: Geoffrey Jackson is an architect, Ronald Brewster-Wright a banker. All the action takes place as various characters move through the Hopcroft’s kitchen: Marion Brewster-Wright is patronizing toward those on the social adder below her rung. Things are From the other side of the door leading to the living room can be heard patches of conversation including that of the never-seen Mr. and Mrs. Potter. Jane is in a tizzy for having failed to supply enough tonic water and the moment she exits through the back door to correct this mistake the absurdity of the small domestic incidents characterizing the farcical nature of the proceedings kicks into another gear: locked out the back, her frustrated attempts to re-enter have the effect of making her seem like an unknown gate-crasher even to her husband. It is on this note that the act ends. Meanwhile, Eva Jackson appears to be suffering from clinical depression or perhaps is on the downward end of a bipolar cycle.
Act Two: This Christmas. The Jackson Kitchen
One year later, it is the Jacksons who are hosting a Christmas party. Eva has become suicidal and her husband responds to this by suggesting he move out…and into a new life with Sally whose life is lived off-stage like the Potters. Eva responds by attempting to stab herself to death, but Geoffrey takes the knife from her. Upon Geoffrey’s exit from the from the kitchen, she makes a second attempt by doing a Sylvia Plath. The obsessive-compulsive cleaner, Jane Hopcroft enters and mistakenly presumes that Eva is merely cleaning the oven and eagerly insists upon taking over. Eva—who never speaks to anyone directly during the entirety of Act Two, proceeds to go about trying to write a suicide note and do the deed itself, only to be constantly frustrated by guests moving in and out of the kitchen without taking notice of her state of mind, but only the state of her actions. Ronald mistakes Eva’s attempt to hang herself from the chandelier as an electrical problem to fix and while he is doing so, his heavy-drinking wife Marion flips on the switch, accidentally shocking her husband. Eva’s attempt to do the same to fatal extremes is another failure to kill herself. When Marion re-enters later, she brings news: the Jacksons’ pet dog has apparently bitten Mr. Potter. Meanwhile, Geoffrey expresses disappointment that the fortunes of Sidney Hopcroft appear to have risen substantially over the course of the previous year. As Eva begins to sing “The Ten Days of Christmas” and is gradually joined by the other guests, the curtain falls as Geoffrey, who had left shortly before, returns home with a doctor in tow.
Act Three: Next Christmas. The Brewster-Wright Kitchen.
What a difference two years makes! Marion has made the inevitable trek from heavy-drinking to full blown drunk or, for the politically correct, a sufferer of the disease of alcoholism. Whatever term one might use it all amounts to the same: she’s pretty much a social embarrassment for her husband and spends most of her time incapacitated by the effects of the disease which causes her to be unable to stop lifting a glass container filled with liquor to her lips and consuming it until nothing is left. Making matters even worse—or contributing to Marion’s condition, depending upon perspective—Ronald’s bank is flailing, the heat in the house is working and everybody’s freezing. Meanwhile, Geoffrey’s latest architectural success has become a disaster: his attempt to try something new and innovative has resulted in the ceiling collapsing onto the shopping complex he designed. Apparently, Eva’s failure at suicide remained intact because she is very much alive and even more animated, prodding her husband to press Ronald on the issue of paying back the money he lent him when the bank’s business started to go into he dumper. The Hopcrofts arrive and though Ronald would rather they hadn’t, he must instead pander to them in a way unthinkable during the party at their place two Christmases ago.
While the bank and Geoffrey’s architectural fortunes have spiraled downward, Sidney has been steadily climbing up that ladder and it is now he who looks down upon the other two from the rung on which he is perched above. To wit: Sidney has too much money invested in his bank for Ronald to be rude. Nevertheless, rather than face the humiliation of submission, both the Jackson and the Brewster-Wrights spend most of the party attempting to avoid interaction with the Hopcrofts who have become so completely unagitated regarding the presence of the others they eagerly await the moment to offer the gifts they have brought: tools for Ronald and gin for Marion. Sidney introduces the others to a new game called Musical Dancing although Jane introduces it as Musical Forfeits. It’s like Musical Chairs except there are no chairs and anyone who remains in motion after the music has stopped must take a forfeit: holding onto something which makes continuing to dance a bit more of an effort. The winner will be rewarded with a chocolate Santa. Sidney and Jane, however—notably—are not participants in the game, but mere spectators to the display of humiliation before them involving apples clutched beneath the chin, oranges held between the knees, a silver spoon in the mouth, a tea cozy draped over the skull which gradually becomes a pear placed in the silver spoon in the mouth and tea towel around the legs to match the cozy on the head.
