Why did Apollo bring down a plague on the citizens of Thebes? Someone must have messed up royally. But who?
The plague: The Theban men—Oedipus and his pals Tmolus, Dictys and Aristotle (Tom, Dic, and Ari)—can’t hold a logical thought for ten consecutive seconds; The Theban women have been afflicted with trays permanently affixed to their left hands, no two alike. (Jocasta’s is a breakfast tray, Episiotome’s a medicine tray, Tracheotome’s an ash tray (she had just given up smoking!) Pistophone’s a waitress tray. Helen and Mediocrite and Calliope share the same fate. But does it have to be their fate?
Oedipus is the king, he should do something. He solved the Sphinx’s riddle. But now, like the other men, he is too befuddled to figure out the role he has played in the tragedy. Tiresias, a 200-year-old blind prophet is summoned for his advice. But Tiresias, once a he, has recently become a she and is more interested in knowing why she doesn’t have a tray. Is she not a real woman? No, she’s simply not a Theban.
Tiresias advises the women of Thebes to invoke the Goddess for help. The Goddess—not at all how they had pictured her—responds to their incantations. She has an idea for lifting the womens’ plague without the men returning to their pre-plague misogynistic logic. Will it work? Will Oedipus figure out his role in the tragedy and do his duty? Will Apollo call off his punishment? The women are not so sure. The men are clueless.

Two young, upper class women named Rose end up in an asylum together. It’s 1940 and Dr. Freeman is on the cutting edge of mental health. The Roses are attended by Tee and Flora, who have obstacles of their own to overcome.

Sandra is seven when her father dies of a massive heart attack. Her mother is left with two young daughters, a house she can't afford, and nothing else. It is 1951 in rural Missouri. Despairing, Helen considers suicide, even murder, before quickly remarrying in order to support her daughters.
Helen's mother, Maggie does what she can to provide emotional support for Helen, Sandra and baby Alberta. But she and her husband Cliff, Helen's stepfather, are even poorer than Helen. They're still raising Cliff's daughter Faye, whose older sister Inez has married and begun having children of her own.
Sandra grows up with a mother who becomes an alcoholic, remarries again and again. She gets pregnant and married at fifteen to an abusive, alcoholic man only three years her senior.
When Cliff dies, Maggie auctions off everything she owns and moves in with Helen and Alberta.
Maggie is the primary emotional support for her entire family, so it is no surprise that Maggie is the person Sandra first comes out to when she realizes she is a lesbian.
Throughout the play, we are shown how death, poverty, even abuse is overcome with the strength and pervasiveness of love.