A summer’s evening in Mississippi. In a dimly-lit bedsitting room, a young handsome athlete hobbles about on crutches, heads purposefully for his private bar and refuses to sleep with his wife. He has had, in his life, one profound friendship: with a fellow athlete, who is now dead, dead of drink.

The bitter and sodden Tennessee Williams hero is sure of just one thing: his own descent and his friend’s began with a half-uttered suspicion by his wife that their friendship was unnatural. Meanwhile the young man’s parents nag and scratch at him in greedy hope of an heir.