Summary
Betty, a woman in her late twenties, is reading at a cafe table. Bill, the same age as Betty, enters the cafe and approaches her. He excuses himself and asks if the chair across from her is taken. She replies that it is. He apologizes. She says “Sure thing.” Then a bell rings softly. The scene begins again, with the same first three lines, but this time Betty replies that the chair isn’t taken, but that she is expecting someone. Bill says thanks anyway. Betty replies “Sure thing.” The bell rings again. Once again, Bill approaches Betty, excuses himself, and asks about the chair. This time the dialog proceeds slightly more rapidly. Betty says that she is expecting somebody very shortly. Bill asks if she would mind if he sits there “until she or he or it comes” which establishes the genre of the play as a witty romantic comedy. When Betty glances at her watch and remarks that her friend is running late, it seems that there is hope for Bill. Then he offers a clichèd pick-up line: “You never know who you might be turning down.” Betty rejects him with “Sorry. Nice try, though.” Bill then replies “Sure thing.” The bell rings again d they start over, with Bill asking directly if the seat is taken. Betty says no. Bill asks if she would mind if he sits there. She says yes. He tries again, at the same fast pace. Betty says, finally and for the first time in this particular world, that she wouldn’t mind if he sits.
Bill, looking for a conversation opener, asks Betty about her book. The first time, she says that she wants to read in quiet. The next round she replies with the title: The Sound and the Fury. When Bill guesses wrong about the identity of the author, the conversation ends quickly. Then after the bell, he correctly identifies the author of the book as Faulkner. But he hasn’t read it, so has nothing to say. He appeals to the waiter as an external out as that scene ends. When he gets another chance and Betty asks if he has read it, he replies “I’m a Mets fan myself.” In another fresh start, Bill tells Betty that he read the book in college. She asks a follow-up question: “Where was college?” His first answer is Oral Roberts University. His second is “I was lying. I never went to college. I just like to party.” His third answer, "Harvard," allows him to move on in the conversation to the next topic.
Betty asks Bill if he likes Faulkner. He replies that he loves Faulkner and spent an entire winter reading him once. Betty explains that she has just started the book. Bill then launches into a gushing speech about Faulkner's writing, at the end of which he asks Betty what she thinks. She replies that she thinks it’s pretty boring, and the bell sounds. The next scene takes up the same topic with almost identical language, but with a different form: Instead of Bill making a long speech, the rapturous description of Faulkner’s writing is divided into a dialog shared by Bill and Betty. This time Betty exclaims: “I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to read him.” Again, it’s implied that her comment about the author reflects her feelings about Bill. He points out that she might not have liked him before: “You might not have been ready for him. You have to hit these things at the right moment or it’s no good...It’s all in the timing.”
Bill asks Betty if she comes in there a lot. When she answers that she’s just in town for two days from Pakistan that ends the conversation quickly. The second time, the conversation progresses further, to the point of back-and-forth dialog, but this time Bill reveals that he’s had a nervous breakdown. The next time Bill asks, Betty questions if Bill is really interested in whether she comes there a lot, and then launches into a long monologue in which she judges that Bill is “only interested for the sake of making small talk long enough to ask me back to your place...all your really want to do is fuck—which you won’t do very well…” In the next scene in on this topic, Bill and Betty wonder about having been at the same cafe at different times. Just when they are connecting about the serendipitous nature of city life, Bill breaks his attention by looking for a waiter. By the time he returns his focus to Betty, it is too late, she has gone back to her book. He thus performs the topic of missed connections they have been discussing.
In the final version of the city life conversation, Bill keeps his focus on Betty, and so they move on to the next topic, about relationship status. Bill asks Betty if she was waiting for someone. She says that she was. He asks if it’s a boyfriend. She says sort of. He asks “What’s a sort-of boyfriend?,” a comedic simile that results in three different answers, each of which rings the bell: her husband, someone she’s meeting to break up, and her lesbian lover. Their conversation moves forward when she says no, she’s not waiting for someone, just reading. Bill comments that this seems like a sad occupation and throws out a standard pick-up line: “What’s a good looking woman like you doing out alone on a Friday night?” to which Betty replies: “Trying to keep away from lines like that.” Then in the next scene, he tries the same line, but with “no offense” added, and she replies that she is out alone for the first time in a long time because she ended a long-term relationship. He invites her out to the movies. She says no, but she appreciates the invitation. Betty then responds to Bill’s line “Sort of a sad occupation for a Friday night” comment more imaginatively, revealing information about her character: that she is a romantic. They briefly imagine a trip to Paris together. She asks him to the movies. Bill turns her down, because he has a girlfriend. They then rapidly cycle through girlfriends and sort-of girlfriends that disqualify Bill for this relationship: two at once and one is pregnant, a “castrating bitch” that he just dumped, and his mother. Then it’s Bill’s turn to have just ended a relationship recently.
Betty invites Bill to the movies. Bill says that sounds like fun and asks what’s playing. She replies a couple of early Woody Allen movies. After a bit of back and forth, Bill reveals that the early Allen films get on his nerves. The bell rings. Then Bill and Betty speak at the same time, each inviting the other to the Woody Allen festival. When they discover their mutual love for Allen’s movies, they become excited. When Bill asks “So are you still interested?” it’s clear that he’s talking about a relationship with him. There’s a long pause. Betty asks Bill if he likes Entenmann's crumb cake. He replies that he went out at two in the morning the night before to get one. Bill asks Betty if she had an Etch A Sketch as a child. She says yes and asks him if he likes Brussels sprouts. After a pause, he admits he thinks they’re disgusting. She agrees.
Bill asks Betty “Do you still believe in marriage in spite of current sentiments against it?” She replies yes. They agree on children, two girls and a boy, who will go to school at Harvard, Vassar, and Brown. Betty promises that she will love Bill and cherish him forever. He asks “Do you still want to go to the movies?” She says “Sure thing.” Bill and Betty call for the waiter together.
Analysis
Right away, the audience learns that the world of the play is one of second (and third, and fourth) chances. Every time a scene ends, Bill has the chance to begin it again, and try to get further in his relationship with Betty. The beginning sets up the tension of the character’s initial objectives: Bill wants to sit with Betty, while Betty wants to read. She momentarily considers allowing him to join her, but he messes up the opportunity by saying the wrong thing. Bill’s question “Excuse me, is this chair taken?” is a metaphor for whether Betty is available romantically. The phrase “Sure Thing” has several different meanings: don’t worry about it; you’re welcome; that’s ok; I don’t mind. It marks the end of each encounter, right before the soft-ringing bell. They move on to the fastest possible way to replay the scene, twice, exploring rhythmic possibilities, with both negative and positive outcomes. Bill has succeeded in sitting down with Betty. But his next two lines, about all of the other seats being taken and the place being nice, lead nowhere.
The next topic of conversation is the book Betty is reading. This topic introduces the theme of class to the play. Being educated allows Bill to move forward in his relationship with Betty. Book learning thus has an instrumental social function. When Bill is trying to display his knowledge of culture by stating the author of the book, there is a wrong answer (Hemingway) and a right answer (Faulkner). This bit of rapid dialog is also an intellectual joke written for an audience who knows exactly who wrote The Sound and the Fury. It has an added depth when one knows that Faulkner is known for writing long sentences, while Hemingway is known for writing short ones. It’s also funny as a comedic gag, because the momentum is moving along, and then the dialog is halted by Bill’s obviously wrong reply, and he must start again. The line about being a Mets fan is a non-sequitur, as the Mets are a baseball team, a completely different topic from literature. It’s a sign that the Bill and Betty of this iteration are not a match, because their interests lie too far apart. And it represents their varying depths of intellectual interest, as Bill can name the book she’s reading, but doesn’t know anything about it.
Oral Roberts University is a southern evangelical college. A New York audience would find Bill’s answer particularly unexpected, and thus funny. The next iteration also has an unexpected twist as he says exactly the wrong thing to impress Betty: that he was lying, never went to college, and really just likes to party. This scene also shows how the play is compressing time, as this revelation is one that would normally take more time for Betty to discover. Bill’s final answer about college is obviously the right one, because Harvard is the most prestigious university in the United States, and a symbol of the elite. Bill has evolved from a somewhat fumbling character to someone who can change either his story or his true biography until he wins the game, which is defined as progressing to the next topic of conversation with Betty.
Once the conversation progresses beyond simply stating the author's name, Bill's next mistake is to be long-winded and self-absorbed when he tries to get into more depth about Faulkner. He ignores Betty’s comment that she has just started the book, and blathers on about Faulkner, sounding pretentious. It is clear that when Betty says that she thinks the book is pretty boring, she is actually judging Bill. In contrast, the same speech when divided into a conversation between Bill and Betty builds their relationship. The best example of this is when Betty completes Bill’s sentence. He says “And the way he’s grasped the mystery of time–” and she continues “–and human existence.” This section makes the point that intellectual life is best when it’s shared. Their analysis of Faulkner is also an example of metadiscourse, as it names themes that apply to both The Sound and the Fury and to this play: time and timing, and the “mysteries of human existence.”
When Bill points out that Betty might not have liked him before, this is funny because the audience has just experienced her rejection of Bill in the previous scene. Bill states a major claim of the play: “You have to hit these things at the right moment or it’s no good...It’s all in the timing.” The timing refers to meeting someone at the right time in your life, when you’re emotionally ready, and also the coincidence of being in the right place at the right time, and also the timing of dialog. The rhythm of conversation in comedy is called comic timing. “All in the Timing” is also the name of a collection of six one-act plays by David Ives (of which “Sure Thing” was one) which were performed together off-Broadway for over 600 performances.
There are two levels of allusion in this discussion: The Sound and the Fury alludes to the Faulkner novel, which itself is alluding to Shakespeare. “The sound and the fury” is a phrase from Macbeth’s soliloquy when he finds out that Lady Macbeth has died: “Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” In choosing this particular Faulkner title to discuss, the play is pointing to a deeper truth about human existence for which the theater is a perfect analogy: life is transient, and absurdly scripted. Thinking about Bill and Betty’s dialog from the perspective of this allusion to Shakespeare supports the argument that their characters are in fact empty of significance, as the language itself continuously shifts their made-up identities to achieve the goal the audience expects of a romantic comedy: happily ever after.
Next we move on to a pick-up line cliché: “Do you come in here a lot?” Among other things, this line is a way to suss out if someone is local. The first attempt reveals that progress in love is not only a matter of time, but of space. As soon as Bill hears that she’s only in town briefly from a far-away place, that complicates the relationship to the point of impossibility. Bill’s nervous breakdown is a comic punchline, but also underscores the normative expectations of romantic relationships in both an emotional and social sense. When Betty asks Bill “Are you really interested, or do you just want to pick me up?” she is calling attention to Bill’s line as a line, that is, as a “speech act” as it is called in the philosophy of language. A speech act is an utterance that performs an action. The action of this line, Betty suspects, is to pick her up—that is, to have sex with her. The humor of Betty’s monologue is found in her specificity—her description of his girlfriend named Stephanie who is away at medical school in Belgium, for example. In a play that’s been restrained in its language and character development, the excess of her monologue is a disruption of pace and tone. Whether this is a bad experience that Betty has had that she’s projecting onto Bill, or a fantasy, or an actual iteration of Bill’s character, is left ambiguous. The phrase “different time zones” is a metaphor for being in the same place, but at different times, and by extension the role of chance in forming relationships.
When Bill mentions a “sort-of girlfriend,” this is a simile which represents a complex quasi-commitment, of being almost in a relationship, but not quite, so possibly available. The rhythm of this section is rapid, and great fodder for comedy, as the actor who plays Betty must quickly cycle through three different emotional states: unavailable, breaking up, and happily seeing her lover, and the actor who plays Bill must rapidly respond to his various fortunes. Then Bill messes up again by trying a standard pick-up line. When he tries again with the same line, and “no offense” added, it works long enough to find out that she broke up recently and to invite her to the movies, which she turns down. The implication is that the obstacle in this case is internal: Betty is not emotionally ready for a new relationship. They have a moment of romance, imagining a trip to Paris together. Then roles are reversed as Betty asks Bill to the movies, and all of his many possible inappropriate relationship statuses are explored in comic exaggeration. When Bill simply has ended a relationship recently, they are able to move on to the next topic.
Betty asks Bill if he stopped to talk because he has a weird political affiliation. This begins several rounds of conversation about politics, which end in rapid-fire fashion when he commits to a political party, begins a diatribe, and says something off-base. The conversation moves on when Bill says that he is “unaffiliated.” Once Bill and Betty share a lack of political affiliation, they move on to agree that “labels are not important.” Then, to illustrate the point, Bill starts to share personal information about his grade-point average and his origin, which the bell rejects in rapid succession until he has a 4.0 and is from Westchester County, a wealthy suburb of New York, at which point Betty agrees with him. Then Bill tries to rephrase the thesis into “A man is what he is” and has to adjust his language until it is gender-neutral, and so could apply to not only himself but Betty as well. She agrees again. Then he runs through a sequence of social anomalies in the form of “So what if…?” (I admire Trotsky; I’ve had total body liposuction; I don’t have a penis.) and gets a rapid bell each time. He finally arrives at at a socially acceptable anomaly: the Peace Corps, and gets Betty’s agreement. Bill sums up his thesis with: “You just can’t hang a sign on a person.” To which Betty replies: “I’ll bet you’re a Scorpio.” The end of that bit is marked by many bells ringing.
When Bill and Betty agree that they are both “unaffiliated,” they are both affirming the most generic inoffensive possibility for their characters, and reflecting the time that the play was written, when being an independent voter was popular. The thesis “labels are not important” is ironic because it is the opposite of what is demonstrated in the scene—and, in fact, in the entire play. The scene shows that labels are important, because Bill can’t make headway with Betty with a poor GPA or being from an economically depressed Midwestern city. Labels, it is implied, are used to assess economic prospects. The phrase “A man is what he is” is also ironic because it imagines human nature as essential, which is the exact opposite of Bill’s ever-changing character. The “So what if” form is funny in dialog with the bell because it immediately negates the question, acting as a mechanism of social conformity. The final exchange of this section is pure irony, as judging Bill by his astrological sign is precisely hanging a sign on a person.
The next topic of conversation is Woody Allen films. In this moment the play is being self-reflexive, because “Sure Thing” is written in the style of Woody Allen—a romantic comedy about two neurotic New Yorkers in a complicated relationship. So, Bill’s initial assessment that they get on his nerves could be a comment on the pitfalls of this play. In the next iteration, when Bill and Betty realize their mutual love for Woody Allen movies, they not only speak hyperbolically (Bill: “Do you like the early ones?” Betty: “I think anybody who doesn’t ought to be run off the planet”), their characteristic behavior becomes over-the-top: Bill has seen the Allen movie Bananas eight times, and Betty twelve. The fact that their fandom of Woody Allen is the thing that finally brings them together is a comment on genre: they finally fit together when their characters like the same genre, and so it is implied, occupy the same genre.
Once Bill and Betty conform to the same genre, their taste preferences sync up. They are thrilled to share very generic tastes. Entenmann’s crumb cake is a mass-produced product from a company that started in New York; the fact that Bill and Betty both eat it means that they are just like everyone else in their location. The Etch A Sketch was one of the most popular toys in the baby-boom generation, so it is no magical coincidence that they both had one; rather, it's simply a demographic marker. There is some tension for a moment when the audience is led to wonder if Betty likes Brussels sprouts, while Bill thinks they’re disgusting, but of course they agree on this as well. This is also no surprise since Brussels sprouts famously provoke disgust in many. The humor of the scene is in Bill and Betty’s growing excitement about all that they have in common, which turn out to be trivial, commonplace items.
The delightful fun of the end of the play is how quickly Bill and Betty’s relationship develops into happily-ever-after, especially after many failures up until then. Because the bell isn’t interrupting, the audience can enjoy a rush of dialog. The absurd leap between agreeing about Brussels sprouts to marriage is highlighted by the jump from a short staccato exchange to the long line with the qualifier “in spite of current sentiments against it.” Bill and Betty are both traditionalists who believe in marriage and want children. That is not a surprise because that’s what the genre of romantic comedy demands: a happy ending, defined as a marriage. All of Bill and Betty’s earlier attempts at connection while inhabiting anomalous identities failed. They must be as generic as possible, unaffiliated politically, with common tastes and desires of their social class, to reach the climax of complete agreement and the denouement of leaving the cafe together.
Not only do Bill and Betty agree on children, they agree about where their children will go to school—all East-Coast, Ivy-League colleges. The play engages in social satire here, as the romantic comedy enforces the conformist behavior that brought Bill and Betty to this point, and reproduces the class system. The audience’s expectation of the form of the play has led the characters to this moment. “Sure Thing” is a short play, and in fifteen minutes Bill and Betty have discarded many possible identities in order to arrive at a conventional ending. Betty’s affective response, her agreement to love and cherish Bill forever, is tantamount to a wedding vow. This moment comes after the negotiation over marriage and children. (Notably, Bill does not promise to love and cherish Betty forever). After this deep dive into their future wedded bliss, Bill and Betty return to the present, in which Bill again asks Betty to the movies. When she replies “Sure Thing,” it brings the play full circle. “Sure Thing” has two meanings here: an interjection that’s a polite “Yes,” and a noun describing an absolute certainty, a guaranteed success. It leaves the play on a high note, as they call for the waiter, so they can leave the cafe to embark on their future together. It’s also an ironic phrase, because the audience knows that the couple has endured many failures in parallel lives, and so, on a meta level, were not at all a sure thing.
