The play is set in a one-room apartment at the top of an old Victorian house. When the curtain rises, we see Jimmy Porter and Cliff Lewis, seated on opposite sides of he stage and reading newspapers. There are others beside them and between them, forming “a jungle of newspapers and weeklies.” Jimmy is smoking a pipe. A tattered stuffed bear and squirrel sit on a chest of drawers at the end of a double bed, which takes up most of the back wall. The furniture is simple and somewhat shabby.
