Tragedy 4 Acts
New York 1946
A group of dissolute but rather loveable low-life characters, all of them alcoholics, are waiting anxiously in the saloon of Harry Hope's cheap New York City rooming house in the summer of 1912.
They are looking for the arrival of Theodore Hickman, 'Hickey' to them, a drunken but successful travelling salesman who appears each year on this, the eve of Harry Hope's birthday, to sponsor a lavishly alcoholic party. When Hickey arrives though, he has become evangelically teetotal and tries to cajole all his old cronies into joining him. Such is the power of Hickey's salesmanship that several of them make foredoomed attempts to emulate him, but at the same time his fervour spreads nervousness through those who do not.
Characters:
Denizens of Harry Hope's: