Visiting her great-aunt CLARA on her birthday, DIANE and her mother TANDY are joined by Clara’s friends, MAGGIE, TERRY and ANN. Realizing Diane is reaching an age at which she can actually begin to see the bigger picture of life, Clara starts telling Diane what she really thinks. About humanity. Youth. Life. Aging. Rage. Family. Maggie, Terry and Ann join in and the four old women float back and forth from the present to various places in their past. With the arrival of EDWARD, the FedEx delivery guy, the memories shift to marriage, sensuality, passion, sexual violence and desire. This is not what Diane expected from the afternoon.
Tandy is enjoying it all but is taken aback when she realizes she has crossed the frontier from youthful eagerness to elder wisdom. Her battle with breast cancer mirrors the challenges of the others in the room, challenges of surviving rape, soul-crushing marriages, the loss of children and beloved partners. She is becoming the women she sees in front of her. Munching on birthday cake, the memories, jokes and opinions fly, finally to arrive at the big question. Death.
Clearly, it’s time for intermission.
Act Two opens with the putting away of the cake and the breaking out of the bourbon. With night falling, the women enter the darker corners of existence. Maggie relives the motorcycle accident that would eventually put her in her wheelchair; Clara’s fading sight makes all but memories appear shadowed and faded and Terry’s family chips away at her strength. The final frontier of life is not for the faint of heart. Gently the women welcome Tandy into the crone fold and coax Diane along, encouraging her to embrace her voice, her strength and her freedom from constricting thong underwear.