拉斯迪是一位资深且极为优秀的首席检查官，由于工作的关系经常接触到一些令人心痛的社会弊端以 及各式各样的犯罪。一位有野心而且不择手段，人尽可夫的女助理检查官卡洛淋，利用共同工作的机会，引诱拉斯迪和她发生关系，她的主要目的是鼓励拉斯迪争取地检处处长的职位，而她本人则可取代他获得首席检查官之职。但当她了解到拉斯迪并无此野心后，便立即离他而去。突然某一天卡洛淋被人谋杀，现场遗留的一切证据将拉斯迪推上了法庭。拉斯迪在痛苦与不甘中为自己辩护。究竟是谁导演了这出戏呢……

The first act opens with Hirst's offering a drink to Spooner: "As it is?" – that is, neat (UK) or straight (U.S.) – and Spooner's reply: "As it is, yes please, absolutely as it is" (15). During the first act, Spooner claims to be a fellow poet and to have known his more illustrious literary host and mutual acquaintances and relationships in the past. Toward the end of act one, Hirst's keepers (quasi-body guards) "vagabond cock" Foster and Briggs seek to fend off the self-insinuating Spooner, leading Hirst "out of the room (52) and away from him. The act ends with a "Blackout" – visually demonstrating Foster's taunt: "Listen. You know what it's like when you're in a room with the light on and then suddenly the light goes out? I'll show you. It's like this. ... He turns the light out" (53).
During Act Two, in his increasingly inebriated state, Hirst may mistake or feign recognition of Spooner as an Oxbridge classmate from the 1930s, an apparently false impression which Spooner nevertheless encourages (68–78), leading both of them into a series of increasingly questionable reminiscences, which Hirst finally and abruptly undercuts: "This is outrageous! Who are you? What are you doing in my house?" going on to accuse Spooner of being an impostor: "You are clearly a lout. The Charles Wetherby I knew was a gentleman. I see a figure reduced. I am sorry for you. Where is the moral ardour that sustained you once? Gone down the hatch." – allusively and both wistfully and comically combining the clichés "Gone with the wind" and "Down the hatch," after which, Briggs "enters, pours whisky and soda, gives it to" Hirst, who "looks at it" and then says, "Down the hatch. Right down the hatch. (He drinks.)" (78). Hirst proclaims, "Let us change the subject. Pause. For the last time." (91), but immediately asks, "What have I said?" That leads the characters to debate what Hirst's phrase for the last time precisely "means" (91–94), leaving all of them, according to Spooner, "in no man's land. Which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but which remains forever icy and silent." Following the illustrative "Silence", Hirst utters the play's final words and provides its final action: "I'll drink to that" (95): "He drinks," paralleling the opening words of the first act ("As it comes?"), and the play ends, ambiguously, with a "SLOW FADE" of lights (95).

作为一枚政治筹码，海军情报官欧尼尔（黛咪·摩尔 Demi Moore 饰）成为了美国历史上第一个参加特种部队“海豹突击队”训练的女性军官。凭借此事，一直呼吁男女平等的参议员狄海雯（安妮·班克罗夫特 Anne Bancroft 饰）获得了诸多选票。然而，利欲熏心的狄海雯根本就不关心欧尼尔作为个体的感受和遭遇，因为她心里明白，欧尼尔根本不可能完成特种部队里残酷而又可怕的训练。让所有人大吃一惊的是，欧尼尔不仅出色的完成了训练任务，甚至有可能通过最终考试成为特种部队正式的一员，在此节骨眼上，狄海雯只得使出阴招，以欧尼尔为同性恋的虚假理由将其逐出了队伍。在朋友的帮助下，欧尼尔揭穿了狄海雯的阴谋，不仅如此，她还一次实战任务中凭借着自己的智慧大展拳脚，获得了同伴的尊重。

Dominic works round the clock: nights making biscotti for his family's bakery in a working-class Italian neighborhood in Pittsburgh, then days downtown where he's a specialist in firing people at a company that negotiates mergers. He's thrown for a loop with he learns that Bella, an elderly neighbor who's his family's closest friend, has but a few months to live. All her life, she's saved money in coffee cans for her daughter, Lucca's, wedding, but Lucca is off in foreign lands, initially as a Peace Corps volunteer, and doesn't need a man. Dominic vows to bring Lucca home and convince her to marry him to fulfill Bella's most fervent wish. What will Lucca say?