BOSOMS & NEGLECT

by Guare, John

Scooper, a successful but emotionally insecure man edging reluctantly into his forties, has a problem relating to women. When he discovers that his aged, blind mother, Henny, has been hiding the fact that she is suffering from cancer he persuades her with some difficulty to undergo surgery. Faced with the horror of his mother’s secret, he soon turns his attentions towards Deirdre, a beautiful but extremely neurotic girl and a compulsive liar, who he has noticed in the waiting room of their shared psychiatrist. Their conversation, which is alternately funny, caustic, outlandish and filled with sharp observations on modern life, leads them to discover a shared interest in literature as well as their mutual dependency on their “shrink” whom neither can apparently live without. Their fears lead to an altercation in which Scooper injures Deirdre’s foot and she stabs him in the spleen, resulting in both being hospitalised alongside Scooper’s mother, whose conclusions about her own lot in life become a lesson for us all.