Tables and Chairs
Characters
- Alice:
- Female, innocent and naive, rather plain, completely unaware of the ruthless machinations of the real world, very neurotic, desperate to please, very wealthy.
- Howard:
- Male, strangely charismatic, inexplicably sexy, the perpetual bad boy, a charmer and manipulator
- Spencer:
- Male, faded, jaded man-of-the-world, the same age as Howard, rather dull but not unlikable, pretentious and demanding, essentially harmless.
- Naomi:
- Female, vivid and extravagant, a bit dangerous, the possessor of a vicious wit, a woman who has seen the beginning and the end, the same age as Howard and Spencer, always the bridesmaid, never the bride.
Setting
All scenes take place in a room of Alice's home. There is one entrance, up-stage center. The furnishings consist of a table and four chairs. A second table is added for Act Two, a third table for Act Three, and a fourth table for Act Four.
Production history
- Staged reading, Second Stage Theatre, New York City; one scene published in Scenes and Monologues from the Best New Plays, Meriwether Publishing, Roger Ellis, editor.
The Story
Alice, wealthy and hopelessly naïve, meets and takes in Howard, Spencer, and Naomi, who are eternally unemployed, financially desperate, homeless, artist-theater con artists. Alice is madly in love with Howard, who, as the play opens, is having a “quiet day” and refuses to speak. Desperate to please him, Alice tries to cater to everyone’s needs as she is introduced to and indoctrinated into the world of Howard and Spencer and Naomi, who have been linked together symbiotically since childhood—an ad hoc, ad lib day-to-day existence of absurdist, dramatic adventures. This is a play with a highly absurdist comic edge, which explores life’s rituals and delusions, the mysterious power of love, and the unchanging and unchangeable nature of personality. Or as Naomi declares: "We’re all just props in the big drama of life."