Three Tall Women takes place in the bedroom of a sick and forgetful old woman (A). In the first act she is cared for by a middle-aged companion (B) and visited by a young woman (C) sent by the lawyer to settle some financial affairs. A is imperious and acerbic, which B is used to deal and manages effectively. However, C is impatient and quick to rise to A’s jibes. During their discussion of A's life, they muse on love, family relationships, sex, pain, and the body’s inevitable decline. After A suffers a stroke that leaves her on the edge of death, her body is replaced by an identical mannequin of A in the bed. Away from the bed, she joins B and C in discussing events in their mutual life and how one matured into the other. For they are, in fact, all the same woman--"everywoman”--at different stages of her life.
Three Tall Women guide sections