Sidney Hopcroft is a thirty-something, middle-class businessman who appears to own a chain of stores, and later a number of apartment buildings. However, the precise nature of his business is never fully explained. Initially portrayed…
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Jane Hopcroft
Jane Hopcroft is Sidney Hopcroft’s long-suffering wife. Obsessed with cleaning her house (and, at times, cleaning other people’s houses), she lacks much of a sense of empathy or understanding for other people’s thoughts and…
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Ronald Brewster-Wright
Ronald Brewster-Wright is a local banker who, as the play begins, is seen by his friends and peers as an impressive, successful man whose favor is always worth currying. Over the course of the play…
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Marion Brewster-Wright
Marion Brewster-Wright is, along with Jane Hopcroft, the character with the fewest number of lines in the play. However, it’s clear from the beginning that she’s an uncomfortable, frequently insecure woman. As the wife…
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Geoffrey Jackson
At the beginning of the play, Geoffrey Jackson is a confident, attractive, highly charismatic man in his thirties. But by the end of the play, he’s lost his charisma and his optimism. An architect by…
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Eva Jackson is the volatile wife of Geoffrey Jackson. She’s shown to be mentally unstable in some never-explained way, and in Act One she claims that she has to take pills every few hours…
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Minor Characters
Dick Potter
A local friend of the other characters, known for being funny, sometimes in an obnoxious way, and for being a schoolteacher. Dick Potter never appears onstage.
Lottie Potter
Dick Potter’s wife, a teacher, like her husband. She also never appears onstage.
Sally
A woman with whom Geoffrey Jackson is considering running away in Act Two. Like the Potters, she is only mentioned by name and doesn’t appear onstage.